Meet the only US government employee jailed over CIA 'torture'

This is John Kiriakou, who worked as an intelligence officer for the CIA between 1990 and 2004.

He is currently in a federal prison in Pennsylvania, serving a 30-month sentence.

The 50-year-old is the only former or current US government employee to have been imprisoned over the CIA's detention and interrogation programme, which was laid bare and labelled torture by a long-awaited Senate report last week.

His crime? Revealing the existence of that programme.

Three years after he left the CIA, Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC News in which he disclosed the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda detainee whose capture he was involved in back in 2002. It was the first time waterboarding had been described to the American public and the wider world.

In 2012 Kiriakou pleaded guilty to disclosing classified information, including the name of a fellow CIA operative to a journalist.

His Congressman, Virginia Democrat Jim Moran, has dubbed Kiriakou an "American hero", calling for a presidential pardon from Barack Obama in light of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report.

Almost all names were redacted from the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, with the US department of justice that prosecuted Kiriakou saying it had no plans to reopen its investigation against the CIA.

Next February Kiriakou will be moved to house arrest for the final three months of his sentence. He has written a book while in prison.

Zubaydah is still in Guantanamo Bay.

(Picture: Truthout.org)

More: [CIA 'torture report' - what you need to know]5

More: [The 20 damning report findings into CIA's post-9/11 'torture' programme]6

More: [Fox News had a complete meltdown over the CIA 'torture' report]7