Waterboarding girlfriend for 'speaking with a boy' online leads to boyfriend's arrest

Dylan VanCamp is in hot water - and jail - for using an infamous US military torture technique against his girlfriend in an attempt to find out if she was faithful.

The 22 year-old Wisconsin man is charged with six felonies and three misdemeanors, including suffocation, battery, and stalking, for a series of attacks over their seven-month relationship.

A month into the relationship, VanCamp is said to have waterboarded the anonymous woman for “speaking with a boy” on a social media site, Smoking Gun reported.

The woman told police she “could not breathe” and “felt like she was drowning” after one such attack.

The jealousy-filled boyfriend apparently dragged his then-girlfriend from the shower into the bedroom, punched her in the head, and held a knife to her face.

Pushing her onto the bed, he then “forced a washcloth over her mouth and nose”, according to the police report, before he “dumped about three cups” of water onto the victim’s face, trying to get her to admit that she was cheating on him.

In other incidents, VanCamp allegedly threw a salad fork at her, injured her leg, and threatened her with a pair of pliers by saying, "One thing has to go: a tooth or a nail.”

All incidents are alleged to have occurred between May and December 2015, but the victim only informed police in mid-January with details emerging in the media this week.

VanCamp is now being held at Lincoln County jail before appearing in court on March 16.

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Waterboarding became a household word during the US invasion of Iraq after the Bush administration “authorized” the torture technique on suspects in prisons such as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and CIA black sites.

READ MORE: Uncensored CIA torture report demanded by lawyers in Iraq war abuse case

Prisoners were kept in what were described as "inhumane conditions" with prisoners "confined like sheep".

In addition to waterboarding, detainees were "bound and stretched out in the sun", held on leashes, smeared with human excrement, and sexually assaulted in “rape rooms”, despite assurances by President George W Bush to the contrary.

"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers," he said in 2003 at the Republican National Committee Presidential Gala.

After initially denying reports, President Bush banned waterboarding detainees in 2006.

Following consistent pressure from human rights advocates, politicians around the world, and certain media outlets, this month the US government finally released 198 photographs of detainees mistreated by invading forces in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2006.

READ MORE: Pentagon releases Bush-era torture pictures after 12-year-long legal battle

More recently, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump said during this presidential campaign that he would not only "bring back waterboarding", but "bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding."

This echoed his comments made in November that he does not care if torture doesn’t work, because "they deserve it anyway".

John Yoo, one of the White House counselors who co-authored the so-called “torture memos”, told Fox News last month: "I'm afraid Mr Trump thinks of waterboarding, or worse, as a kind of punishment, like a sentence - as you said, revenge or reprisals. That's not what its purpose is. The purpose of it is not to take revenge for past acts. It's to figure out what to do now to get intelligence to stop future attacks."