Guantanamo Interrogator Also Tortured Suspects as Chicago Detective: The Guardian

Former Guantánamo Bay official Richard Zuley, who led “one of the most shocking acts of torture ever conducted” at the military prison, spent 25 years as a notoriously brutal Chicago detective, a new investigation by the Guardian published Wednesday has revealed.

From 1977 to 2007, Zuley used torture, threats, and abuse to elicit confessions—at least one proven false—from his suspects, the majority of whom were not white, the Guardian reports. As a detective, Zuley’s tactics included:

• Shackling suspects to police-precinct walls through eyebolts for hours on end;
• Allegedly planting evidence when there was pressure for a high-profile murder conviction;
• Threatening to harm family members of those under interrogation, as a point of leverage;
• Pressuring  suspects to implicate themselves and others;
• Threatening the death penalty if suspects did not confess.

In 2013, state’s attorney Anita Alvarez made a landmark decision to free a man who had confessed to murder in 1990 during one of Zuley’s investigations. Lathierial Boyd, in prison for 23 years, accused Zuley of planting evidence and withholding key details in order to secure a conviction against him.

Zuley was similarly brutal at Guantánamo, where his techniques were “supercharged.” He was in charge of the torture of a detainee named Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who wrote in his memoir that he made false confessions. According to the Guardian, “After Zuley took over in July 2003, Slahi was subjected to even more extreme interrogation tactics: multiple death threats, extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and a terrifying nighttime boat ride in which he was made to believe that worse was in store.”