The CIA Torture Report Is Causing Political Ripples Overseas

The executive summary of the report released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Central Intelligence Agency’s brutal detention interrogation practices after 9/11 offers the most damning assessment of the agency in four decades. In the mid-1970s, the Church Committee, another Senate entity, issued reports that condemned the CIA for spying within the U.S., attempting to assassinate foreign leaders, working with the Mafia on operations, and other abuses.

Amid the furor in Washington about how the torture report will affect the agency, the U.S., and even the 2016 presidential elections, little attention has been paid to another impact of the report’s release. The report is likely to have significant effects on politics in several of the countries that were home to the dungeon-like prisons where the CIA, and local intelligence officers, detained and harshly treated prisoners.