Right: US President George Bush has been quoted as saying that his administration was justified in allowing torture of terror suspects.
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Arguments against using torture on suspected terrorists
1. Torture is a cruel and inhumane form of treatment
The United States Senate report on the use of torture on suspected terrorists by the CIA has specified many of the cruel and inhumane practices employed.
Examples of brutality by CIA interrogators cited in the report include the November 2002 death from hypothermia of a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor at a secret CIA prison. Other instances include detainees who were deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, at times with their hands shackled above their heads, and subjected to 'rectal feeding' or 'rectal hydration' without any documented medical need.
The report describes one secret CIA prison, whose location is not identified, as a 'dungeon' where detainees were kept in total darkness, constantly shackled in isolated cells, bombarded with loud noise or music, and given only a bucket in which to relieve themselves.
At one secret CIA site, detainees were subjected to what was known as a 'rough takedown': CIA officers would scream at a detainee, drag him out of his cell, cut off his clothes, bind him with tape, put a hood over his face and drag him down a corridor while slapping and punching him.
Another example is given of a man, who, during his interrogation, wore a collar made from a towel which was used to slam his head into walls. He was kept in stress positions or in a coffin-shaped box and waterboarded regularly as medical staff stood by to keep him alive. Waterboarding involves pouring water over a cloth covering a restrained victim's face, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning. Such procedures are referred to as 'enhanced interrogation'. This man was subjected to these techniques for nearly 24 hours a day for 19 days. He had already been held in complete isolation for 47 days.
According to a summary of the report provided to reporters, the most aggressive techniques were used 'in combination and nonstop', including keeping detainees awake for as long as 180 hours, standing or in stress positions.
2. Torture is in violation of national and international law
Torture is prohibited under international laws and conventions. The United States is a signatory to the Geneva Convention which seeks to regulate behaviour in wartime.
Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention, which applies to prisoners of war, states 'No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever.'
The United States is also a party to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Convention states, 'Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.'
The position adopted by the United Nations is completely unequivocal. It allows no external threat to the wellbeing of a country or its citizens as a justification for the use of torture. It also notes with regard to the individual perpetrator of torture that no order from a superior or public official can be allowed to act as exoneration for those who commit torture.
Among other provisions the Convention also states, 'Each State Party shall ensure in its legal system that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible. In the event of the death of the victim as a result of an act of torture, his dependents shall be entitled to compensation.' Thus the United Nations convention defines the person who has been tortured as the victim of an injustice and obliges the offending State to make amends to that person.
Amnesty International has similarly declared that 'Accountability...requires that the United States provides redress to those individuals who have suffered abuses at the hands of the US government, including those unlawfully detained, unlawfully rendered to torture, and those tortured and abused in US custody.'
Torture is legally prohibited under title18 of the Code of Laws of the United States. The definition of torture used is as follows: 'torture' means an act committed by a person acting under the cover of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
'severe mental pain or suffering' means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from - (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (C) the threat of imminent death; or (D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.
A lack of jurisdiction has been used to prevent United States nationals who commit torture overseas being punished under American law; however, critics of torture note that however difficult it may be to punish American torturers, the practice is illegal under their country's laws.
3. Torture is usually covert and is difficult to control
It is claimed that torture is usually conducted secretly without oversight and thus readily escalates to become more severe over time.
The circumstances under which torture generally takes place involve components which led to these practices becoming progressively more extreme. The Senate report reveals that United States orchestrated torture sites, referred to as 'black sites', were established in a number of foreign jurisdictions. Their operations were not made public and they were unavailable to media scrutiny. The official oversight of the interrogation techniques used there was inadequate. It has been claimed that circumstances such as these lend themselves to accelerating abuse.
In an opinion piece published in The Sydney Morning Herald on December 10, 2014, the author, Mick O'Malley summarised the findings of the United States' Senate report. He stated, 'There was little oversight and no methodology, according to the report, just a network of prisons in unnamed countries in which unnamed agents and contractors abused suspects of crimes for intelligence of questionable value.'
According to the report, as the program went on, even the CIA headquarters lost control of field agents, who began using enhanced interrogation without approval.
It has been suggested that some of the interrogators became desensitised to what they were doing and used increasingly brutal techniques with growing frequency. One detainee who was tortured was backed up against the wall and a box laid on the floor to look like a coffin.
Whenever the suspect denied having certain information, the interrogators grabbed or slapped his face. On the first evening, he was waterboarded, as a result of which he coughed, vomited and had spasms. Subsequent sessions accelerated the routine, progressing more quickly to waterboarding.
4. Torture is not an effective interrogation device
Torture is not generally regarded as a useful form of interrogation as, under the duress of severe physical and psychological mistreatment, suspects are prone to make false statements.
It has further been suggested that less aggressive techniques are likely to be more effective.
According to the Senate report, the CIA's own records found that seven of 39 detainees subjected to especially aggressive interrogation yielded no intelligence, and that others provided useful information without being subjected to the harsh techniques. Other detainees who were harshly interrogated made up information.
The Senate committee said that it had reviewed 20 of the most commonly cited examples of successes attributed by the CIA to enhanced interrogation. It found each of those examples wrong.
In 2008 a group made up of fifteen former interrogators and intelligence officials who had served with the CIA, the FBI and the United States military released a set of principles to guide effective interrogation practices at the conclusion of a meeting convened by Human Rights First in Washington. One of the group's conclusions was 'Non-coercive, traditional, rapport-based interviewing approaches provide the best possibility for obtaining accurate and complete intelligence.'
Information resulting from torture has been regarded with suspicion for a long time. Two American research psychologists, Mark Costanzo and Ellen Gerrity, quoted one CIA operative who participated in torture during the Vietnam War as stating, 'We had people who were willing to confess to anything if we would just stop torturing them.' Costanzo and Gerrity further note that the United States Army Field Manual explains that strategically useful information is best obtained from prisoners who are treated humanely, and that information obtained through torture has produced faulty intelligence.
5. Torturing suspected terrorists fosters terrorism
Opponents of the use of torture on suspected terrorists maintain that such procedures are actually counterproductive in that they increase hostility toward the United States and make it more difficult to attract supporting coalitions. They further suggest that such behaviour helps enemies of the United States to encourage young, disaffected people to join them as terrorists in actions against America.
After the Senate report was released, the United States president, Barack Obama, stated, '[Torture techniques]were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests. Moreover, these techniques did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners.'
In 2008 a group made up of fifteen former interrogators and intelligence officials who had served with the CIA, the FBI and the United States military released a set of principles to guide effective interrogation practices at the conclusion of a meeting convened by Human Rights First in Washington. One of the group's conclusions was 'The use of torture and other inhumane and abusive treatment...has caused serious damage to the reputation and standing of the United States. The use of such techniques also facilitates enemy recruitment...and deprives the United States of the standing to demand humane treatment of captured Americans.'
Two American research psychologists, Mark Costanzo and Ellen Gerrity, have noted that in 2003, after the release of the Abu Ghraib photos, a reporter asked a young Iraqi man about the reasons for the rise in violence against United States soldiers. The young man's response emphasised the need for revenge. He was quoted as saying, 'It is a shame for foreigners to put a bag over their heads, to make a man lie on the ground with your shoe on his neck...This is a great shame for the whole tribe. It is the duty of that man, and of our tribe, to get revenge on that soldier-to kill that man. Their duty is to attack them, to wash the shame. The shame is a stain, a dirty thing-they have to wash it. We cannot sleep until we have revenge.' Costanzo and Gerrity concluded that torture 'generates intense hatred and desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, radicalising even ordinary people with no strong political views'.