Ethical arguments regarding torture
Encyclopedia
Ethical arguments have arisen regarding torture
, and its debated value to society
. Despite worldwide condemnation and the existence of treaty provisions that forbid it, some countries still use it. The ethical assertion that torture is a tool is at question.
).
It has been suggested that one of the reasons torture endures is that torture does indeed work in some instances to extract information/confession, if those who are being tortured are indeed guilty. Richard Posner
, a highly influential judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, further argue that "If torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb
in Times Square, torture should be used—and will be used—to obtain the information. ... no one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility."
A utilitarian argument against torture is that majority of torture are employed not as a method of extracting information, but as a method of terrorising and subjugating the population and enables state forces to dispense with ordinary means of establishing innocence or guilt and with the whole legal apparatus altogether. Therefore, it is better that a few individuals be killed by bombers than a much greater number—possibly thousands of innocent people—are tortured and murdered and legal and constitutional provisions destroyed. During the investigation of Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro
's kidnapping, General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
reportedly responded to a member of the security services who suggested torture against a suspect, "Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro. It would not survive the introduction of torture."
The Spanish Inquisition
is probably the most infamous example, in which torture was used to extract information regarding allegations of heresy
. In early modern times under certain conditions, torture was used in England. For example the confession of Marc Smeaton
at the trial of Anne Boleyn
was presented in written form only, either to hide from the court that Smeaton had been tortured on the rack
for four hours, or because Thomas Cromwell was worried that he would recant his confession if cross examined. When Guy Fawkes
was arrested for his role in the Gunpowder Plot
of 1605 he was tortured until he revealed all he knew about the plot. This was not so much to extract a confession, which was not needed to prove his guilt, but to extract from him the names of his fellow conspirators. By this time torture was not routine in England and a special warrant from King James I
was needed before he could be tortured. The wording of the warrant shows some concerns for humanitarian considerations, the severity of the methods of interrogation were to be increased gradually until the interrogators were sure that Fawkes had told all he knew. In the end this did not help Fawkes much as he was broken on the only rack in England, which was in the Tower of London
. Torture was abolished in England around 1640 (except peine forte et dure which was abolished in 1772).
The use of torture in Europe came under attack during the Enlightenment
. Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments (1764) denounced the use of torture as cruel and contrary to reason. The French Revolution
abolished the use of torture in France
and the French Armies carried abolition to most of the rest of Europe
. The last European jurisdictions to abolish legal torture were Portugal
(1828) and the canton of Glarus
in Switzerland
(1851).
Under codified legal systems such as France, torture was superseded with a legal system that is highly dependent on investigating magistrates and the confession remains The Queen of Proofs. Such magistrates are often under pressure to produce results. It is alleged that in many cases police violence towards suspects has been ignored by the magistrates. In the adversarial system
of Common Law
used throughout the English speaking world, the experience is a different one. As the two parties have to convince a jury whether the defendant in a case is guilty or innocent of a crime, if the defence can persuade a jury that reasonable doubt exists over the credibility of a confession then the jury is likely to disregard the confession. If the defence can show that the confession was made under such duress that most people would make such a confession, then the jury is likely to question the confession's credibility. Usually the more duress that can be shown to have been used by law enforcement by the defence, the less weight most juries will place on confessions. In Britain partly to protect the individual against police brutality and partly to make confessions credible to a jury, all interviews with a suspect are audio taped on a machine which make two simultaneous copies one for the police and one for the defendant. In Northern Ireland, where society is more polarised than in the rest of the United Kingdom, which means that allegations of police brutality are perceived by sections of the community to carry more credence, interviews are video taped.
It has been alleged that in certain circumstances torture, even though it is illegal, may have been used by some European countries. In "anti-terrorist" campaigns where information is needed for intelligence purposes, and not to obtain a confession for use in court, there is a temptation by the security forces, whether authorised by governments or not, to extract intelligence from alleged terrorists using any means available including the use of torture. Where there is a time component to a crime, for example in a kidnapping case, there is also a temptation for the police to try to extract information by methods which would nullify the use of such information in court.
s against torture.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
in an opinion article published in The Independent
on 23 May 2005 wrote:
Two academics at Deakin University
in Victoria, Australia
, Professor Mirko Bagaric, a Croatian born Australian based author and lawyer, who is the head of Deakin University's Law School, and a fellow Deakin law lecturer, Julie Clarke, published a paper in the University of San Francisco Law Review arguing that when many lives are in imminent danger, "all forms of harm" may be inflicted on a suspect, even if this might result in "annihilation
".The reasoning behind the proposal to legalise torture is that:
It was observed that Bagaric "was not the author of what he wrote, all he did was reintroducing Alan M. Dershowitz’ thesis, Sharon
’s [Israeli] government legal adviser and the theorist of the legal torture".
When reviewing Alan Dershowitz's book, "Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge" Richard Posner
, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, wrote
On December 20, 2005, Albert Mohler
, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
addressed the problem of whether torture
should be used by American military forces in order to gain important information from terrorist suspects. Although he spoke out against any form of legal codification, he did state the following:
However many states have used torture not to extract information, but as a means of terrorising their populations or specific communities. Franz Fanon, in "The Wretched of the Earth
" reports the French in Algeria using "preventative torture" on entirely innocent people to stop them doing anything in future. Claiming to use torture in order to save lives, the French colonial regime killed between 1-1.5 million Algerians in the process.
In most countries torture is illegal, and this being so, outside the normal framework for establishing guilt or innocence. Therefore an abnormally large proportion of torture victims are either innocent (apart from membership of target communities) or of mistaken identity. For example Khalid el-Masri
, an innocent German citizen was kidnapped and tortured, having been mistaken for Al-Qaida chief Khalid al-Masri
. The Red Cross in Iraq estimated that 80% of detainees at Abu Ghraib
were the "wrong people".
In response to the article by Professor Bagaric and Mrs Clarke, Amnesty International
spokeswoman
Nicole Bieske, who is also a lawyer
, was stunned by the idea of regulating torture.
Professor Bagaric and Mrs Clarke submitted the paper to an American law journal because of:
Joe Navarro
, one of the F.B.I.’s top experts in questioning techniques, told The New Yorker,
Toleration of torture and arbitrary detention has been likened to a "cancer of democracy" in a book of the same title by Pierre Vidal-Naquet
, which begins to undermine all other aspects of a state's legitimacy. On the 20th anniversary of the coming into force of the United Nations Convention against Torture, Philip Hensher writes "Civilization is at once compromised if, in defense of other freedoms, it decides to regress, to accept the possibility of torture as it is seen in the movies."
The obvious rebuttal to this stance is that no such scenario has ever existed. In addition, those situations resembling such a case were resolved without the need to torture any suspect. Furthermore, it is asked whether torture would be limited to suspects, or whether one could torture the family and friends of this detainee to make him compliant.
Beyond that, another reason is that torture fails to elicit the expected information because the subject is saying anything interrogators want to hear to stop the ordeal (or deliberately lies to waste the interrogators' time and make it more likely the bomb will go off), or worse: the detainee is innocent. By adopting a "the ends justifies the means" approach this would allow nine innocent people to be tortured as long as the tenth offered a full confession.
It has been estimated that as few as two dozen of the 600 detainees at Guantanamo had any potential intelligence value even if it could be obtained from them.
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, and its debated value to society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
. Despite worldwide condemnation and the existence of treaty provisions that forbid it, some countries still use it. The ethical assertion that torture is a tool is at question.
Premise
The basic ethical debate is often presented as a matter of deontological versus utilitarian viewpoint A utilitarian thinker may believe, when the overall outcome of lives saved due to torture are positive, torture can be justified; the intended outcome of an action is held as the primary factor in determining its merit or morality. The opposite view is the deontological, from Greek "deon" (duty), which proposes general rules and values that are to be respected regardless of outcome. However, if the outcome of policies allowing torture are uncertain (or if the outcome can not be definitely traced back to the use of torture) then there can be a utilitarian view that torture is wrong (see issues related to the ends justifying the means in analysis of the ticking time bomb scenarioTicking time bomb scenario
The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether torture can ever be justified.Simply stated, the consequentialist argument is that nations, even those such as the United States that legally disallow torture, can justify its use if they...
).
It has been suggested that one of the reasons torture endures is that torture does indeed work in some instances to extract information/confession, if those who are being tortured are indeed guilty. Richard Posner
Richard Posner
Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...
, a highly influential judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, further argue that "If torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb
Ticking time bomb scenario
The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether torture can ever be justified.Simply stated, the consequentialist argument is that nations, even those such as the United States that legally disallow torture, can justify its use if they...
in Times Square, torture should be used—and will be used—to obtain the information. ... no one who doubts that this is the case should be in a position of responsibility."
A utilitarian argument against torture is that majority of torture are employed not as a method of extracting information, but as a method of terrorising and subjugating the population and enables state forces to dispense with ordinary means of establishing innocence or guilt and with the whole legal apparatus altogether. Therefore, it is better that a few individuals be killed by bombers than a much greater number—possibly thousands of innocent people—are tortured and murdered and legal and constitutional provisions destroyed. During the investigation of Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years....
's kidnapping, General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was a general of the Italian carabinieri notable for campaigning against terrorism during the 1970s in Italy, and later assassinated by the Mafia in Palermo.-Biography:...
reportedly responded to a member of the security services who suggested torture against a suspect, "Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro. It would not survive the introduction of torture."
History
Historically, torture has been reviled as an idea, yet employed as a tool and defended by its wielders, often in direct contradiction to their own averred beliefs. Judicial torture was a common feature of the legal systems of many countries including all Civil Law countries in Europe until around the French Revolution. This was part of ancient Greek and Roman Law theory that remained valid in Europe. Roman Law assumed, for example, that slaves would not tell the truth in a legal court as they were always vulnerable to threats from their owners. Their testimony could only be of value if it were extracted by a greater fear of torture. Legal scholars were well aware of the problems of false testimony produced by the threat of torture. In theory torture was not meant to produce a confession as such, but rather details of the crime or crime scene which only the guilty party would know.The Spanish Inquisition
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
is probably the most infamous example, in which torture was used to extract information regarding allegations of heresy
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
. In early modern times under certain conditions, torture was used in England. For example the confession of Marc Smeaton
Marc Smeaton
Mark Smeaton was a musician at the court of Henry VIII of England in the household of Queen Anne Boleyn. He was one of five men executed for alleged treason and adultery with Queen Anne.-Smeaton's background:...
at the trial of Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn ;c.1501/1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of Henry VIII of England and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the...
was presented in written form only, either to hide from the court that Smeaton had been tortured on the rack
The Rack
The Rack is the first album by Asphyx. It was released in 1991 by Century Media Records.-Track listing:# "The Quest for Absurdity" – 1:21# "Vermin" – 4:02# "Diabolical Existence" – 3:55# "Evocation" – 5:31# "Wasteland of Terror" – 2:16...
for four hours, or because Thomas Cromwell was worried that he would recant his confession if cross examined. When Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes , also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.Fawkes was born and educated in York...
was arrested for his role in the Gunpowder Plot
Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby.The plan was to blow up the House of...
of 1605 he was tortured until he revealed all he knew about the plot. This was not so much to extract a confession, which was not needed to prove his guilt, but to extract from him the names of his fellow conspirators. By this time torture was not routine in England and a special warrant from King James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
was needed before he could be tortured. The wording of the warrant shows some concerns for humanitarian considerations, the severity of the methods of interrogation were to be increased gradually until the interrogators were sure that Fawkes had told all he knew. In the end this did not help Fawkes much as he was broken on the only rack in England, which was in the Tower of London
Tower of London
Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...
. Torture was abolished in England around 1640 (except peine forte et dure which was abolished in 1772).
The use of torture in Europe came under attack during the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments (1764) denounced the use of torture as cruel and contrary to reason. The French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
abolished the use of torture in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and the French Armies carried abolition to most of the rest of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. The last European jurisdictions to abolish legal torture were Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
(1828) and the canton of Glarus
Glarus
Glarus is the capital of the Canton of Glarus in Switzerland. Glarus municipality since 1 January 2011 incorporates the former municipalities of Ennenda, Netstal and Riedern....
in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
(1851).
Under codified legal systems such as France, torture was superseded with a legal system that is highly dependent on investigating magistrates and the confession remains The Queen of Proofs. Such magistrates are often under pressure to produce results. It is alleged that in many cases police violence towards suspects has been ignored by the magistrates. In the adversarial system
Adversarial system
The adversarial system is a legal system where two advocates represent their parties' positions before an impartial person or group of people, usually a jury or judge, who attempt to determine the truth of the case...
of Common Law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
used throughout the English speaking world, the experience is a different one. As the two parties have to convince a jury whether the defendant in a case is guilty or innocent of a crime, if the defence can persuade a jury that reasonable doubt exists over the credibility of a confession then the jury is likely to disregard the confession. If the defence can show that the confession was made under such duress that most people would make such a confession, then the jury is likely to question the confession's credibility. Usually the more duress that can be shown to have been used by law enforcement by the defence, the less weight most juries will place on confessions. In Britain partly to protect the individual against police brutality and partly to make confessions credible to a jury, all interviews with a suspect are audio taped on a machine which make two simultaneous copies one for the police and one for the defendant. In Northern Ireland, where society is more polarised than in the rest of the United Kingdom, which means that allegations of police brutality are perceived by sections of the community to carry more credence, interviews are video taped.
It has been alleged that in certain circumstances torture, even though it is illegal, may have been used by some European countries. In "anti-terrorist" campaigns where information is needed for intelligence purposes, and not to obtain a confession for use in court, there is a temptation by the security forces, whether authorised by governments or not, to extract intelligence from alleged terrorists using any means available including the use of torture. Where there is a time component to a crime, for example in a kidnapping case, there is also a temptation for the police to try to extract information by methods which would nullify the use of such information in court.
Proponents
Some scholars have argued that the need for information outweighs the moral and ethical argumentArgument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
s against torture.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown MBE is a Ugandan-born British journalist and author, who describes herself as a "leftie liberal, anti-racist, feminist, Muslim, part-Pakistani...a very responsible person"...
in an opinion article published in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
on 23 May 2005 wrote:
Two academics at Deakin University
Deakin University
Deakin University is an Australian public university with nearly 40,000 higher education students in 2010. It receives more than A$600 million in operating revenue annually, and controls more than A$1.3 billion in assets. It received more than A$35 million in research income in 2009 and had 835...
in Victoria, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Professor Mirko Bagaric, a Croatian born Australian based author and lawyer, who is the head of Deakin University's Law School, and a fellow Deakin law lecturer, Julie Clarke, published a paper in the University of San Francisco Law Review arguing that when many lives are in imminent danger, "all forms of harm" may be inflicted on a suspect, even if this might result in "annihilation
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
".The reasoning behind the proposal to legalise torture is that:
It was observed that Bagaric "was not the author of what he wrote, all he did was reintroducing Alan M. Dershowitz’ thesis, Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
’s [Israeli] government legal adviser and the theorist of the legal torture".
When reviewing Alan Dershowitz's book, "Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge" Richard Posner
Richard Posner
Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...
, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, wrote
On December 20, 2005, Albert Mohler
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Mohler's approach to Muslims is driven by his belief in the relevance of the Christian Gospel to all people.-Media appearances:Mohler appeared on MSNBC's Donahue on August 20, 2002. The subject was Christian evangelization of Jews...
, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary , located in Louisville, Kentucky, is the oldest of the six seminaries affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention . The seminary was founded in 1859, at Greenville, South Carolina. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to Louisville...
addressed the problem of whether torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
should be used by American military forces in order to gain important information from terrorist suspects. Although he spoke out against any form of legal codification, he did state the following:
Opponents
Many experts argue that torture is an unreliable means of obtaining useful information.However many states have used torture not to extract information, but as a means of terrorising their populations or specific communities. Franz Fanon, in "The Wretched of the Earth
The Wretched of the Earth
The Wretched of the Earth is Frantz Fanon's most famous work, written during and regarding the Algerian struggle for independence from colonial rule...
" reports the French in Algeria using "preventative torture" on entirely innocent people to stop them doing anything in future. Claiming to use torture in order to save lives, the French colonial regime killed between 1-1.5 million Algerians in the process.
In most countries torture is illegal, and this being so, outside the normal framework for establishing guilt or innocence. Therefore an abnormally large proportion of torture victims are either innocent (apart from membership of target communities) or of mistaken identity. For example Khalid el-Masri
Khalid El-Masri
Khalid El-Masri is a German citizen who was kidnapped in the Republic of Macedonia, flown to Afghanistan, allegedly beaten, stripped, raped, and interrogated and tortured by the CIA for several months as a part of the War on Terror, and then released...
, an innocent German citizen was kidnapped and tortured, having been mistaken for Al-Qaida chief Khalid al-Masri
Khalid al-Masri
Khalid al-Masri is the name of a person alleged to have approached two 9/11 hijackers on a train in Germany and suggested that they contact an alleged al Qaeda operative in Duisburg....
. The Red Cross in Iraq estimated that 80% of detainees at Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib
The city of Abu Ghraib in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq is located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000. The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib...
were the "wrong people".
In response to the article by Professor Bagaric and Mrs Clarke, Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
spokeswoman
Spokesman
A spokesperson or spokesman or spokeswoman is someone engaged or elected to speak on behalf of others.In the present media-sensitive world, many organizations are increasingly likely to employ professionals who have received formal training in journalism, communications, public relations and...
Nicole Bieske, who is also a lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, was stunned by the idea of regulating torture.
Professor Bagaric and Mrs Clarke submitted the paper to an American law journal because of:
Joe Navarro
Joe Navarro
Joe Navarro is an author, public speaker and ex-FBI agent and supervisor. Joe specializes in the area of nonverbal communication or body language and has authored numerous books including, What Every Body is Saying and Louder than Words....
, one of the F.B.I.’s top experts in questioning techniques, told The New Yorker,
- “Only a psychopath can torture and be unaffected. You don’t want people like that in your organization. They are untrustworthy, and tend to have grotesque other problems.”
Toleration of torture and arbitrary detention has been likened to a "cancer of democracy" in a book of the same title by Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
, which begins to undermine all other aspects of a state's legitimacy. On the 20th anniversary of the coming into force of the United Nations Convention against Torture, Philip Hensher writes "Civilization is at once compromised if, in defense of other freedoms, it decides to regress, to accept the possibility of torture as it is seen in the movies."
Ticking time bomb scenario
In law enforcement, one perceived argument is the necessity of force to extract information from a suspect when regular interrogation yields no results and time is of the essence, as can be seen in the most frequently cited theoretical example is the "ticking time bomb" scenario, where a known terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb. In such circumstances, it has been argued, that not to use torture would be wrong, and by others that using torture would change society in a manner which would be worse.The obvious rebuttal to this stance is that no such scenario has ever existed. In addition, those situations resembling such a case were resolved without the need to torture any suspect. Furthermore, it is asked whether torture would be limited to suspects, or whether one could torture the family and friends of this detainee to make him compliant.
- Supporters cite cases where torture has worked:
- In the case of Magnus GäfgenMagnus GäfgenMagnus Gäfgen is a German child murderer. In 2002, he was arrested for the murder of 11 year old Jakob von Metzler, the son a well-known Frankfurt banker...
, who was suspected of kidnapping 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler and arrested in October 2002 by German police. Police surveillance had observed Gäfgen pick up a €1 million ransom demanded from the von Metzler family and proceed to go on a spending spree. After the ransom was paid, the boy was not released. Fearing for the boy's safety Frankfurt's deputy police chief, Wolfgang Daschner, had Gäfgen arrested and when he would not talk threatened to cause Gäfgen severe pain. Gäfgen told police where he had hidden von Metzler's body. In this case torture was threatened, but not used, to extract information that, in other circumstances, could have saved a boy's life. The ethical question is whether this can ever be justified. Wolfgang Daschner felt that in the circumstances it was justified. German Chancellor Merkel, in an interview on January 9, 2006 in reference to the Metzler case stated "The public debate showed that the overwhelming majority of citizens believed that even in such a case, the end does not justify the means. That is also my position."
- Opponents, on the other hand, cite cases of rampant abuse: for example, in ChileChileChile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
and Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s thousands of people "disappearedForced disappearanceIn international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
" and were tortured or killed or both.
Beyond that, another reason is that torture fails to elicit the expected information because the subject is saying anything interrogators want to hear to stop the ordeal (or deliberately lies to waste the interrogators' time and make it more likely the bomb will go off), or worse: the detainee is innocent. By adopting a "the ends justifies the means" approach this would allow nine innocent people to be tortured as long as the tenth offered a full confession.
It has been estimated that as few as two dozen of the 600 detainees at Guantanamo had any potential intelligence value even if it could be obtained from them.
See also
- Command responsibilityCommand responsibilityCommand responsibility, sometimes referred to as the Yamashita standard or the Medina standard, and also known as superior responsibility, is the doctrine of hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes....
- Contradictio in terminisContradictio in terminisContradictio in terminis refers to a combination of words whose meanings are in conflict with one another. Examples are "liquid ice" or "square circle"....
- United Nations Convention Against TortureUnited Nations Convention Against TortureThe United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is an international human rights instrument, under the review of the United Nations, that aims to prevent torture around the world....
Further reading
- Allhoff, Fritz; "A Defense of Torture: Separation of Cases, Ticking Time-bombs and Moral Justification"(pdf) International Journal of Applied Philosophy, Fall 2005
- Allhoff, Fritz; "Terrorism and Torture"(pdf) University of California Santa Barbara, Fall 2003
- Bagaric, Mirko; A case for torture May 17, 2005
- Bagaric, Mirko & Clarke Julie;Tortured Responses (A Reply to our Critics): Physically Persuading Suspects is Morally Preferable to Allowing the Innocent to be Murdered University of San FranciscoUniversity of San FranciscoThe University of San Francisco , is a private, Jesuit/Catholic university located in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1855, USF was established as the first university in San Francisco. It is the second oldest institution for higher learning in California and the tenth-oldest university of...
Law Review, Volume 20, Spring 2006, Number 3 - Bagaric, Mirko & Clarke, Julie; Torture: When the Unthinkable is Morally Permissible, State University of New York Press, 2006.
- DW staff; Frankfurt Deputy Police Chief (Wolfgang Daschner) Charged in Torture Case, Deutsche WelleDeutsche WelleDeutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
20 February 2004 - Greek, Cecil E.; Introduction to Beccaria's Thought, Florida State UniversityFlorida State UniversityThe Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
College of Criminology and Criminal Justice: . - Rumney, Phil; the current legal debate surrounding coercive interrogation: Could or should torture be legalised? Beating the Terrorists?(pdf), Sheffield Hallam UniversitySheffield Hallam UniversitySheffield Hallam University is a higher education institution in South Yorkshire, England, based on two sites in Sheffield. City Campus is located in the city centre, close to Sheffield railway station, and Collegiate Crescent Campus is about two miles away, adjacent to Ecclesall Road in...
Law Matters: Issue Number 4 October 2006, Page 2 - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/
External links
- What Is Torture? An interactive primer on American interrogation by Emily BazelonEmily BazelonEmily Bazelon is an American journalist, senior editor for online magazine Slate, and a senior research fellow at Yale Law School. Her work as a writer focuses on law, abortion, and family issues.-Journalism career:...
, Phil CarterPhil CarterPhillip E. Carter is an American lawyer, writer, and former officer in the United States Army.Carter was a founding member of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and he also served as a principal of the Truman National Security Project....
, and Dahlia LithwickDahlia Lithwick-External links:*...
, May 26, 2005 for Slate (A Washingtonpost. Newsweek Interactive Company) - The Stain of Torture by Burton J. Lee III, former presidential physician to George H.W. Bush, Washington Post July 1, 2005
- The Truth about Torture by Charles KrauthammerCharles KrauthammerCharles Krauthammer, MD is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician. His weekly column appears in The Washington Post and is syndicated to more than 275 newspapers and media outlets. He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and The New...
- A defense of government torture. - Contemporary torture Support for the use of torture: International comparisons
- Human Rights First; Tortured Justice: Using Coerced Evidence to Prosecute Terrorist Suspects (2008)