What is waterboarding, what has Donald Trump said on torture and where are the CIA black site prisons?
US President used his first TV appearance since taking office to talk off 'fighting fire with fire' in the war against ISIS
US President Donald Trump used his first TV interview since taking office to say waterboarding is a case of "fighting fire with fire" in the war against ISIS.
Trump's language has stirred up fears of a return to practices used by the Bush administration - when Al-Qaeda suspects and extra-judicial prisoners were tortured in secret "black sites".
We take a look at Trump's views on torture, the practice of waterboarding, and where the CIA's black sites prisons were hosted during the Bush years.
What did Donald Trump say about torture?
Trump used his first interview as president to say he believed the US "should fight fire with fire" and torture "absolutely works".
In an interview with ABC News he said "he wants to keep our country safe" and in reference to ISIS added: "When they're shooting, when they're chopping off the heads of our people, and other people, when they're chopping off the heads of people because they happen to be a Christian in the Middle East, when ISIS is doing things that nobody has ever heard of since medieval times, would I feel strongly about waterboarding?
"As far as I'm concerned we have to fight fire with fire."
Trump said that he would seek advice from his defence secretary James Mattis and CIA director Mike Pompeo to determine what can be done legally to combat terrorism.
The president added that when he asked intelligence chiefs if torture works they said "the answer was yes, absolutely".
The interview on ABC came amid fears Trump would sign an executive order to reinstate the CIA's notorious and "black sites" where suspects were detained and tortured.
Steve Kleinman, a retired air force colonel who is a senior adviser to the FBI, warned against this.
He said: “If the US was to make it once again the policy of the country to coerce, and to detain at length in an extrajudicial fashion, the costs would be beyond substantial – they’d be potentially existential.
"We’ve seen how (torture) promotes violent extremism, how it degrades alliances. We’ve seen how it only serves to provide information that policymakers want to support (desired policies), not what they need."
What is waterboarding?
Waterboarding is a brutal and highly controversial form of torture where a suspect is made to feel like they a drowning.
The suspect has a cloth wrapped around their head which blocks their breathing passages.
Water is then poured onto the cloth to suffocate them.
Usually a military figure will ask questions and then subject the victim to the torture if they refuse to answer or do not give an adequate reply.
It causes extreme pain and can cause lung and brain damage by starving the suspect of oxygen.
It is unclear when waterboarding first came into use but some of the earliest mentions are in 1970s press reports.
In late 2007 it was widely reported that the CIA were using waterboarding to torture extrajudicial prisoners.
The CIA has confirmed it waterboarded three Al-Qaeda suspects.
Where are the CIA black site prisons?
CIA black sites are secret locations where US intelligence carry out high classified military or defence projects.
They are not made public by the military or the US government.
US President George W Bush acknowledged the existence of the secret prisons during a CIA speech on September 6, 2006.
The Washington Post had made the claim that the black sites existed.
A European Union report later stated that it was not possible to contradict reports that secret detention centre were being operated in Poland and Romania.
Poland confirmed that it had hosted black sites in 2014.
In 2002 The Washington Post reported there was a secret CIA prison in a corner of Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan consisting of metal shipping containers.
In 2004 the Guardian reported that three British citizens were held captive in a secret section of Guantanamo Bay called Camp Echo.
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