The Obama administration has started using special law enforcement and intelligence teams to interrogate suspected militants in the United States and abroad, including the Pakistani-American arrested in the Times Square bombing plot, a top official said on Tuesday.
US attorney-general Eric Holder announced the formation of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) in August and gave the reins to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, replacing the Central Intelligence Agency that did have the lead role in intelligence interrogations.
The programme calls for the deployment of mobile interrogation teams, made up of specialists from across the law enforcement and intelligence community, to question important detainees, whether they are in US custody or in the custody of a foreign government.
“There have been a number of deployments of these mobile interrogation teams to include for the Faisal Shahzad case,” said John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism.
Shahzad, a US citizen born in Pakistan, is charged with trying to set off a crude car bomb in New York’s crowded Times Square on May 1. Prosecutors say he has provided valuable intelligence to investigators, who believe he was helped by the Pakistani Taliban movement.
Mr Brennan declined to say whether the mobile teams have also been used in interrogations of the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was captured in the Pakistani city of Karachi in January in a joint operation by the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.
The HIG is the product of executive orders issued by President Barack Obama shortly after he took office in January 2009.
The orders banned harsh interrogation methods put in place by his predecessor, President Ge-orge W. Bush, and moved to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.