Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved various methods of interrogating terror suspects, in a memo under which US Military interrogators at Guantanamo Prison could put prisoners in ‘‘stress positions’’ for four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations.The approval, first in December 2002 and later in a January 8, 2003 memo allowed for inflicting ‘‘fear of dogs’’, and ‘‘mild non-injurious physical contact,’’ the Wall Street Journal reported today.The list contained in the memo, the paper said, was in effect for about one month until complaints about the severity of the techniques from some military officers prompted Rumsfeld to request a high-level review of interrogation policy on January 17, 2003. The Defence Department has refused to disclose how many methods remain on a new list Rumsfeld approved in April 2003, ‘‘a list that officials say is still in use at the offshore prison,’’ the paper said. ‘‘But some practices disclosed this year at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, resemble methods on the list approved by Rumsfeld,’’ the Journal said.
