Now that the CIA’s secret guidelines for interrogating suspected al-Qaeda operatives have been made public, the world has a better understanding of the bureaucratic side of the debate over detainee abuse under the Bush administration.

For an understanding of how interrogation techniques played out inside a prison cell, look back at our examination of the detention of Iraqi Major General Hussam Mohammed Amin. Amin, named the “Six of Clubs” on the Bush Administration’s card deck of “Iraq’s Most Wanted,” related the story of his nearly three-year incarceration for the first time to our reporter Michael Bronner.

This excerpt from our piece last month highlights what Amin endured:

Unseen interrogators demanded the location of nonexistent weapons. He lost track of time, unsure whether he’d been there hours or days. At some point amid the fusillade, he was told that he would be executed. He believed it. He felt blood running down his face and neck — three jagged gashes across his forehead that would require stitches. “Every day, I thought, ‘Now, I will die,’” he said.

Each time he nodded off, one of his minders would kick him or hit him with the stick. “Even when you are sleeping, they beat you,” he told me, shaking his head slowly. “You wake by punching.”

Through 12 years of international weapons inspections of Iraq, Amin was the man in the middle between Saddam Hussein and the teams of United Nations weapons inspectors. Although he was essentially telling the truth about Iraq’s WMD programs, once U.S. military forces invaded Iraq in 2003, Amin became a fugitive.

After voluntarily turning himself in, Amin was suddenly overwhelmed by soldiers, his hands and feet bound and a black bag pulled over his head. He was first held without charges at Camp Nama, a base that is off-limits even to most military personnel. The U.S. Joint Special Operations task force run the base, so Amin was never the victim of CIA interrogations.

He was quietly released from custody just before Christmas in 2005.