Torture, that is, the act of inflicting notable physical or moral pain, especially in order to extract information and confession from suspects, is banned by most democratic countries. This example provides some examples of the use of torture in recent times.
It should be noted that this subject is controversial since many countries find it expedient from time to time to use techniques of a kind used in torture; at the same time few wish to be described as doing so, either to their own citizens or international bodies. So a variety of devices are used to bridge this gap, including state denial, "secret police", "need to know", denial that given treatments are torturous in nature, appeal to various laws (national or international), use of juristictional argument, claim of "overriding need", and so on. Realistically, torture has been a tool of many states throughout history and for many states it remains so (unofficially and when expedient and desired) today.
- Recent times in this context is from December 10, 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly as Article 5 states "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
Definition
For a detailed definition of what constitutes torture under international law read the article on Torture.
Current accusations of torture country by country
The neutrality of this section is disputed. |
Torture is still common in many countries, particularly those with despotic or totalitarian regimes. The list here is incomplete and over represents countries where information on such activities is more readily available. Readers should supplement the list in this article with independent research.
Chile
In the second half of the 20th century a number of countries in South America used torture. One notable example of a regime known for its use of torture was that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s.
France
During the Algerian war of 1955-1962, the French military used torture against the National Liberation Front, which struggled for the independence of Algeria using force (bombings etc.). Paul Aussaresses, a French general in charge of intelligence services the Algerian war, defended the use of torture in a 2000 interview in the Paris newspaper Le Monde. In an interview on the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, in response to the question of whether he would torture Al-Qaeda suspects, his answer was, "It seems to me it's obvious."
Germany
In 2002, in Cologne, Germany, a history of physical torture at Eigelstein police station only came to light because the victim died, and a post-mortem examination unearthed the facts. Further investigation revealed that the police officers obviously had resorted to physical mistreatment of suspects for quite some time, and none of them reported the mistreatment.
Israel
Israel has used torture since at least the 1970s, but it was only in 1987 the Israeli Supreme Court formed a special commission headed by retired Justice Moshe Landau, to review the whole question of torture. In their report they sanctioned the use of "moderate physical pressure". The human rights group B'Tselem estimate that 85% of all Palestinian detainees are tortured. The methods used include prolonged sleep deprivation; prolonged sight deprivation using blindfolds or tight-fitting hoods; forced, prolonged maintenance of body positions that grow increasingly painful; and verbal threats and insults. Almost always they are also combined with confinement in tiny, closet-like spaces; exposure to temperature extremes, such as in deliberately overcooled rooms; prolonged toilet and hygiene deprivation; and degrading treatment, such as forcing detainees to eat and use the toilet at the same time. Beatings are also common. In the Israeli and collaborationist South Lebanon Army prison at Khiam (where suspected Hizbollah guerrillas, their families and Lebanese civilian internees were detained) in Israeli-occupied Southern Lebanon, torture, including electric shock torture, was routine. This was proved after the end of the occupation in 2000, when Lebanese who freed the prisoners found torture devices. [1] [2]
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia officially considers torture as illegal under Islamic Law; however, it is widely practiced [3]. See The story of William Sampson and William Sampson
Soviet Union
Torture was widely practiced in the Soviet Union to extract confessions from suspects, especially in case of alleged plots against the security of the state or alleged collaboration with "imperialist powers".
Spain
Although officially illegal, torture in Spain continues to be used by police forces at various levels as a means to extract confessions or as punishment. Reported occurrences of torture usually involve people detained under anti-terrorist legislation, and immigrants, both asylum seekers and resident immigrants accused of common crimes or immigration offences.
Spanish authorities consistently fail to implement recomendations by the of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the Committee Against Torture to combat the use of torture in detention. The UN committee expressed its concern "about the length of judicial procedures and made reference to reports that indicated that five years had sometimes passed between crime and sentence. The Committee warned that this problem reduces the effect of penal action and discourages people to file complaints." It further indicated that "All members of the Committee were also deeply concerned about the legal practice of five days incommunicado detention." (since October 2003, a reform of the Criminal Procedure Code has extended that period to a maximum of 13 days).
References:
United Kingdom
In 1978 in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) trial "Ireland v. the United Kingdom" the facts were not in dispute and the judges court published the following in their judgement:
- These methods, sometimes termed "disorientation" or "sensory deprivation" techniques, were not used in any cases other than the fourteen so indicated above. It emerges from the Commission's establishment of the facts that the techniques consisted of ...wall-standing; hooding; subjection to noise; deprivation of sleep; deprivation of food and drink.
These were referred to by the court as the five techniques. The court ruled:
- 167. ... Although the five techniques, as applied in combination, undoubtedly amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment, although their object was the extraction of confessions, the naming of others and/or information and although they were used systematically, they did not occasion suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture as so understood. ...
- 168. The Court concludes that recourse to the five techniques amounted to a practice of inhuman and degrading treatment, which practice was in breach of [the European Convention on Human Rights] Article 3 (art. 3).
The ECHR case was a ruling on British policy before the "Parker report" which was published on March 2 1972 and had found the five techniques to be illegal under domestic law:
- 10. Domestic Law ...(c) We have received both written and oral representations from many legal bodies and individual lawyers from both England and Northern Ireland. There has been no dissent from the view that the procedures are illegal alike by the law of England and the law of Northern Ireland. ... (d) This being so, no Army Directive and no Minister could lawfully or validly have authorized the use of the procedures. Only Parliament can alter the law. The procedures were and are illegal."
On the same day (March 2 1972), the United Kingdom Prime Minister Edward Heath stated in the House of Commons that the techniques would not be used in future as an aid to interrogation. As foreshadowed in the Prime Minister's statement, directives expressly prohibiting the use of the techniques, whether singly or in combination, were then issued to the security forces by the Government These are still in force and the use of such methods by UK security forces would not be condoned by the Government.
The Guildford Four and Birmingham Six claimed they were tortured into confessing to IRA bombings by British anti-terrorism police. The British government denied this was the case, or that torture would have been authorised.
United States
CIA agents have anonymously confirmed to the Washington Post in a December 26, 2002 report that the CIA routinely uses so-called "stress and duress" interrogation techniques, which are claimed by some human rights activists to be acts of torture, in the US-led war on terrorism. These sources state that CIA and military personnel beat up uncooperative suspects, confine them in cramped quarters, duct tape them to stretchers, and use other restraints which maintain the subject in an awkward and painful position for long periods of time. The phrase 'torture light' has been reported in the media and has been taken to mean acts that would not be legally defined as torture. Techniques similar to "stress and duress" were used by the UK in the early 1970s and were ruled to be "inhuman and degrading treatment" but not torture by the European Court of Human Rights (see above) and while this is in no way binding on the USA, it is seen as indicative of the state of international law on what constitutes torture.
The Post article continues that sensory deprivation, through the use of hoods and spraypainted goggles, sleep deprivation, and selective use of painkillers for at least one captive who was shot in the groin during his apprehension are also used. The agents also indicate in the report that the CIA as a matter of course hands suspects over to foreign intelligence services with far fewer qualms about torture for more intensive interrogation. [The act of handing somebody to another organization or country, from outside that country, where it is foreseeable that torture would occur is a violation of the Torture Convention.] The Post reported that one US official said, "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job." The US Government denies that torture is being conducted in the detention camps at Guantanamo Bay.
Allegations emerged that in the Allied occupation of Iraq after the second Gulf war, there was extensive use of torture techniques, allegedly supported by American military intelligence agents, in Iraqi jails such as Abu Ghraib and others.
In 2002, Canadian citizen Maher Arar was arrested and deported to Syria, where he claims he was tortured. As of October 2004, Congress is considering "the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" which would empower the Secretary for Homeland Security to deport non-US citizens without review.
In June 2004, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times obtained copies of legal analyses prepared for the CIA and the Justice Department in 2002 which developed a theoretical legal basis for the use of torture by US interrogators if acting under the directive of the President of the United States. The legal definition of torture by the Justice Department narrowed to actions which "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death", and argued that actions that inflict moderate or fleeting pain do not necessarily constitute torture. Based on these legal analyses, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later approved in 2003 the use of 24 classified interrogation techniques for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay which after use on one prisoner were withdrawn. It is the position of the United States government that the legal memoranda constitute only permissible legal research and do not signify the intent of the United States to use torture which it opposes. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has complained about this prominent newspaper coverage and its implications [4].
See also
External links
- We are All Torturers Now New York Times op-ed, 6 January 2005