Do you agree with Torture of suspected terrorists whilst in the custody of an allied nation? Torture during interrogation as defined by the Geneva Convention can be found here and here.
Terrorists as defined by the the U.N. are beng held at places like Guantanamo, Germany, and other alleged jails in the Middle East - is it ok to torture them for information? How about mild torture like sleep deprovation? Is that ok?
I was going to put this in IMHO but I thought it could and possibly would turn into a debate. I was listening to NPR this morning and that is what spurred this discussion, because they were talking with an attorney for a Guantanamo Detainee. This man was captured in Afghanistan and is an enemy combatant - I was wondering after reading the geneva convention literature about military prisoners - what rights he actually has, and if he actually has a chance to be let go.
I would think people let go from Guantanamo and the like, would be prime candidates for terrorists groups having had their fires fueled whilst incarcerated.
I doubt these people will ever be let go. Perhaps that’s torture enough.
What do you think of torture and the treatment of military combatants?
I’ve thought about this a few times, and my arguments always come tumbling down that slippery slope of relativity (not the cool Einsteinian kind, either).
My thought experiment usually goes like this:
[ol]
[li]If I were in the interrogation room, and we had a person with known terrorist connections in “the chair”, would I condone torturing him (and I’m thinking about car-battery-type stuff here) to find out the location of my captured wife? Absolutely yes.[/li][li]Would I, in the same example, condone torture to find out if his ‘cell’ had information about the location of a cache of foodstuffs for nomadic cells? Probably not.[/li][li]Would I condone it if he had the whereabouts of a secret poppy field from which his cell derived the majority of its operating capital? Not sure.[/li][/ol]
When I bring the relativity of “torture” into the equation, it gets far more variable. If “torture” consists of sleep-deprivation…I would say it’s OK up to the point where it becomes physically harmful (forget about trying to note that point in time). If it’s the car-battery thing, I have to think it’s allowable only in the most dire of circumstances.
If I boil the entire thing down to “yes/no”, I would have to say that, in certain circumstances, I believe it’s useful as a very distasteful tool to reach a greater good.
-Cem
P.S. If I misconstrued your entire question, my apologies. I focussed on the torture part…not the foreign place / military combatant issue.
My opinion: no torture permitted under any circumstances, and I would even include sleep deprivation. Torture appears to violate the legal principles that a) people are not obligated to incriminate themselves, and b) that persons are assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Torture turns (b) in particular on its head; all persons tortured are assumed to be guilty, else why why would they be tortured at all? Furthermore, this assumption virtually guarantees that at least some persons tortured are guilty of nothing at all, yet there never seem to be any legal safeguards in place to punish torturers for torturing innocent people, nor does there ever seem to be a means to administer reasonable compensation for the pain and suffering of innocents subjected to torture. Torture de facto seems to imply the abandonment of any human rights whatever on the part of the person tortured, and for me, this must be abhorred.
A bit off topic, but in my view, most persons who advocate torture seem to do so less for the supposed benefits of more accurate intelligence than because they assume that all persons tortured are in fact guilty of heinous crimes and that the torture is an extra dollop of punishment for that (assumed) guilt.
Most everything I have read from actual interrogators is that torture is a terrible means of extracting information. Torture someone enough and they will admit to anything and tell you whatever they think you want to hear just so you stop. The reliability of the information is terrible.
The only time torture, I would think, would maybe enter into the realm of something that should be done is when there is an immediate danger of great harm and time is very short (e.g. terrorist nuke will go off in New York in an hour and you have a guy who knows where it is). Even then it is doubtful it’d be useful and we are onto that slippery slope (where do you draw the line?). That said I’d be hard pressed not to smack the guy around in such a situation.
I think it is fine to use drugs though that may make people a bit more chatty. I am not sure how reliable they are but as long as they do not cause distress or other real harm why not?
I would very much suspect that since the Geneva Convention that there hasn’t been a single presidential term during which torture didn’t take place at the hands of American officials. The difference is that this was something that was done secretly by CIA agents of KGB agents and other such people who had been captured. Spy work is, by nature, secretive and time sensitive–two things which will likely lead to torture regardless of orders.
There’s a difference between professional spies maybe torturing people for specific information that is needed and “rounding up the usual suspects” and holding them indefinitely. Particularly when it is the army being the ones to do the dirty work. Publicly and obviously going against the law of the land is just plain off stupid. And the slapdash “find anyone we can question” method that ended up leading to random Muslim folk getting picked up for very little reason is as good of evidence as you would ever need that someone up the chain was setting unreasonable expectations. Again, it’s just stupid.
In the grand scheme of things, probably 90% of everyone who ended up getting held and tortured probably was guilty of something, but I doubt that any of those had all that much information worth knowing. Anyone who actually had enough knowledge to be worthwhile would never be put publicly recorded and would quite likely be traded back at some point, not held indefinitely.
A subject under torture will say anything the subject thinks might get the interrogator to stop. It will not necessarily bear any relationship to the truth.
What are “known terrorist connections”? Information from a government agency saying that his name came up in their database? Tried and convicted of an (attempted) atrocity where the tested evidence showed collaboration with others who’d engaged in atrocities?
I don’t think governments and their agents have the information, wisdom or self-control to have the power to torture. Mostly they won’t get the right person at the right time.
Even if it is stipulated that 1)the situation is that urgent and 2)torture would actually work, that’s not a justification for permitting it. It might be a justification for doing it, knowing that you will face the consequences later.
If we expect soldiers to die face down in the mud to protect the Republic, I don’t see why we can’t expect a interrogator who decides that extralegal means are necessary to accept that he’ll be hung out to dry (thus dealing with the immediate threat and preserving the rule of law).
Offering them candy isn’t reliably going to bring out the truth either.
Torturing someone coerces them to say something. That something is a data point that you now have that you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t coerced it. And assuming you’re rational and have no desire to railroad the victim into a particular answer, and assuming you have outside sources, it’s entirely plausible that lies will be caught and truths deducted.
With a hostile opponent, you can never take their word on anything regardless of what you do. But the more silent they are, the more you are losing out by any sort of math. Even if they lie 100% of the time that still crosses out possibilities that had been on the table previously.
Torture manuals say that the information is unreliable as a warning to the torturer, not as an anti-torture data point. And they say the same thing about hypnosis and pharmaceuticals.
No torture, period. Including sleep deprivation, which is not “mild torture”; it just doesn’t leave marks and lets you feel self righteous. The torturers and those who ordered the torture should all be executed, as far as I’m concerned, regardless of their orders or excuses for torturing. And hunted down like Nazi war criminals if they flee, even if the hunt takes decades like it did for the Nazis. It is an unforgivable, unexcusable evil.
I agree completely. Torture should be illegal period.
I would hope in the extreme situation I proposed I would get a Presidential pardon. If as an interrogator I resort to torture I should do so fully expecting to get tossed into jail forever myself. If a situation was so extreme everyone agreed in that case it was warranted then there are means to let it slide…but only under exceptional circumstances.
First, I don’t care who the victims are, or if it “works” for that matter. And second, why should I trust the word of torturers that he is what they say he is ? And third, shooting the members of an occupying/invading army doesn’t make you a terrorist in the first place.
If you build in exceptions, the circumstances in which torture is authorised will just keep getting less and less exceptional.
Torture is evil, it ruins people’s lives. People who support any form of torture (or whatever euphemism you judge to be politically acceptable) for whatever reason, are not civilised, they’re animals.
I agree and do not think it should be legal under any circumstances. But we can allow society to say every rule has its exceptions and if society sees a very unique and particular case they may give someone a pass.
We have had discussions here on the notion of Jury Nullification and whether it is acceptable. The idea in favor of it is to allow society to say in a very particular instance we cannot bring ourselves to find this person guilty and throw them in jail even if the letter of the law says they should be.
Presumably this is partly the notion behind pardons granted by high ranking officials.
If I beat the ever loving hell out of a guy who planted a nuclear bomb in New York and I was able to stop the bomb because of that do you really think society would label me an evil bastard and toss me in jail to rot the rest of my life?
I generally agree if you break the law then you should get whatever the law stipulates for violating it.
However, I do not think any rule can be written to account for all possibilities. I think exceptions can and should be made in unique circumstances for which no law could account for. Granted the circumstances would be rare and remarkable which is why a law would never address them.
Again I suspect this is the reasoning behind allowing pardons. Indeed a pardon is codified in law so perhaps we can both win here. Legally, as the torturer, I am prosecuted for torturing Person-X. Also legally the Governor or President (whichever would apply) can grant me a pardon.
I suspect the Governor of New York would be glad I saved the city as would the President of the US.