| US troops in Afghanistan have written permission to use threats, dogs and the firing of mortars near prisoners to help extract information during interrogations, a German news weekly reported on Tuesday. The magazine said one of its reporters had found and taken photographs of the documents at a US military base in southeastern Afghanistan. The directives also allowed "sensory overload," the use of loud noise or music, "use of warm or cold temperatures, long interrogation sessions, threats of transfer to the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, and sleep deprivation to weaken prisoner resistance." Stern quoted a passage from the documents saying "prisoners have a right to at least four hours sleep per day ... regardless of how this time is divided up". |