Custodial Torture

What is torture?

Torture as defined in international law

• Torture has a very specific meaning in human rights law, which most of the world’s governments have agreed.

• Torture is defined as ‘any act by which serve pain and suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person by…..a public official’ (Article 1, UN Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment 1984)

Methods of torture

Various techniques of torture have been used around the world by government agents to:• try and obtain information or confessions;• punish someone for something that they have, or

somebody else, is thought to have done;• to intimidate someone;• to persecute someone for who they are or what

they think.

Problems with torture as an interrogation method

• It is wrong.• Other interrogation strategies are probably superior.• It generates false confessions.• It becomes a crutch for security services, leads them to

neglect more useful methods.• Torture harms its victims for life.• It harms the torturers.• It leads to the torture of the innocent.

Iraq -- abuses at Abu Ghraib prison captured on camera

Warning: These are disturbing.

Photos from Abu Ghraib•breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees,

•pouring cold water on naked detainees,

•beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair, threatening male detainees with rape,

•allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell,

•sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick,

•using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

: sexual humiliation

, prisoners kept naked,

hooding,

beatings,

, deaths,

stress positions

stress positions

stress positions

stress positions

stitching of wounds.

Can torture ever be justified?

In the current ‘War on Terror’, should governments be allowed to use interrogation methods against terrorist suspects that might be considered torture?

THANK YOU..!