Yesterday, the story broke that allegedly, the CIA play the music of a certain Irish boy band to Afghani prisoners (such as Suleiman Abdullah), in an effort to get them to talk. According to NME, Westlife‘s popular 2000 track ‘My Love’ is loudly played, randomly interspersed with heavy metal.
Do terrorists hate pop music? Boy bands? The Irish accent? The noughties? Who knows, but former Westlife member Kian Egan seemed pretty chill about it during a radio interview in Ireland today:
“You know, it’s a pretty annoying song to be played over and over again… It was probably very successful. It probably only took two hours to crack the poor guy.”
But yeah, back to the real world: the two men responsible for the programme, psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jesse, are currently facing severe charges.
The report says this:
“His interrogators would intersperse a syrupy song called “My Love” with heavy metal, played on repeat at ear-splitting volume,” the report states. “They told Suleiman, a newly wed fisherman from Tanzania, that they were playing the love song especially for him. Suleiman had married his wife Magida only two weeks before the CIA and Kenyan agents abducted him in Somalia, where he had settled while fishing and trading around the Swahili Coast. He would never see Magida again.”
“The music pounded constantly as part of a scheme to assault prisoners’ senses. It stopped only when a CD skipped or needed changing. When that happened, prisoners would call to one another in a desperate attempt to find out who was being held alongside them. A putrid smell that reminded Suleiman of rotting seaweed permeated the prison. His cell was pitch black; he couldn’t see a thing. The US government refers to the prison as ‘COBALT.’ Suleiman calls it ‘The Darkness.’”
Hoooooooly dooly.
via The New Daily / NME.
Image: Stuart Wilson via Getty.
