THE INSTRUMENTS OF

“TORTURE”

Etymology :

The word 'torture' comes from the French torture, originating in the
Late Latin tortura and ultimately deriving the past participle of
torquere meaning 'to twist'.The word may be used loosely for more
ordinary or daily discomforts which would be described as tedious
rather than painful.

DEFINITION :

Torture is the infliction of severe pain in order to force someone to do

or say something. Torture comes into play in the context of terrorism
when it is used as a tactic to force suspects or others to reveal
information about their own or others' terrorist activities.
The use of torture to extract evidence from those held in custody as
enemy combatants in the "global war on terror" has raised discussion
about the justifications for and effectiveness of torture since the
disclosure of government memoranda arguing that the Geneva
Conventions and other bans against the use of torture do not apply to
Afghanistan war detainees, Taliban members, Al Qaeda members and
others held in relation to the "war on terror." The revelation of the use
of torture on Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 created
further controversy over the American use of torture.

1980s: History of Torture and Terrorism Begins:

Torture inflicts severe pain to force someone to do or say something,

and has been used against prisoners-of-war, suspected insurgents and
political prisoners for hundreds of years. In the 1970s and 1980s,
governments began to identify a specific form of violence called
"terrorism" and to identify prisoners as "terrorists." This is when the
history of torture and terrorism begins. While many countries practice
torture against political prisoners, only some name their dissidents
terrorists or face potential threats from terrorism.
Torture and Terrorism Around the World :

Governments have used systematic torture in conflicts with rebel,

insurgent or resistance groups in long running conflicts since the
1980s. It is questionable whether these should always be called
terrorism conflicts. Governments are likely to call their non-state
violent opponents terrorists, but only sometimes are they clearly
engaged in terrorist activity.

Torture in the past:

A variety of torture instruments including, at right, the Iron Maiden of

Nuremberg
The Romans used torture for interrogation. They did not regard crucifixion as
torture, though it was a deliberately horrible way to execute people as an
example to frighten others. Prior to crucifixion, victims were often savagely
whipped (sometimes to death) with barbed metal lashes, also to frighten
others. A slave's testimony was admissible only if extracted by torture, on
the assumption that slaves could not be trusted to reveal the truth
voluntarily. Over time the conceptual definition of torture has been expanded
and remains a major question for ethics, philosophy, and law, but clearly
includes the practices of many subsequent cultures.
Modern scholars find the concept of Hell torture to be compatible with
society's concept of Justice during the time of Jesus Christ. Romans, Jews,
Egyptians and many others cultures during that time included torture as part
of their justice system. Romans had crucifixion, Jews had stoning and
Egyptians had desert sun death. All these acts of torture were considered
necessary (as to deter others) or good (as to punish the immoral).
Medieval and early modern European courts used torture, depending on the
accused's crime and social status. Torture was deemed a legitimate means to
extract confessions or to obtain the names of accomplices or other
information about a crime. Often, defendants already sentenced to death
would be tortured to force them to disclose the names of accomplices.
Torture in the Medieval Inquisition began in 1252 and ended in 1816 when a
papal bull forbade its use.
While secular courts often treated suspects ferociously, Will and Ariel Durant
argued in The Age of Faith that many of the most vicious procedures were
inflicted upon pious heretics by even more pious friars. The Dominicans
gained a reputation as some of the most fearsomely innovative torturers in
medieval Spain.
Torture was usually conducted in secret, in underground dungeons. By
contrast, torturous executions were typically public, and woodcuts of English
prisoners being hanged, drawn and quartered show large crowds of
spectators, as do paintings of Spanish auto-da-fé executions, in which
heretics were burned at the stake.
In 1613 Anton Praetorius described the situation of the prisoners in the
dungeons in his book Gründlicher Bericht über Zauberei und Zauberer
(Thorough Report about Sorcery and Sorcerers). He was one of the first to
protest against all means of torture.
In ancient and medieval torture, there was little inhibition on inflicting bodily
damage. People generally assumed that no innocent person would be
accused, so anybody who appeared in the torture chamber was ultimately
destined for execution, typically of a gruesome nature. Any minor mutilations
due to rack or thumbscrew would not be noticed after a person had been
burned at the stake. Besides, the torturer operated under the full authority of
the church, the state, or both.
In Colonial America women were sentenced to the stocks with wooden clips
on their tongues or subjected to the "dunking stool" for the gender-specific
crime of talking too much.
While in Egypt in 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote to Major-General Berthier
that the "barbarous custom of whipping men suspected of having important
secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this
method of interrogation, by putting men to the torture, is useless. The
wretches say whatever comes into their heads and whatever they think one
wants to believe. Consequently, the Commander-in-Chief forbids the use of a
method which is contrary to reason and humanity.

Torture in recent times :

Modern sensibilities have been shaped by a profound reaction to the

war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Axis
Powers in the Second World War, which have led to a sweeping
international rejection of most if not all aspects of the practice.
[dubious – discuss] Even so, many states engage in torture; however,
few wish to be described as doing so, either to their own citizens or to
international bodies. A variety of devices 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 jurisdictional argument, claim of "overriding
need", and so on. Many states throughout history, and many states
today, have engaged in torture (unofficially). Despite worldwide
condemnation and the existence of treaty provisions that forbid it,
torture still occurs in two thirds of the world's nations. There have
been allegations of the torture of children by organizations in the
United States.

Torture by proxy :
In 2003, Britain's Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, made
accusations that information was being extracted under extreme
torture from dissidents in that country, and that the information was
subsequently being used by Western, democratic countries that
officially disapproved of torture.
The accusations did not lead to any investigation by his employer, the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and he resigned after disciplinary
action was taken against him in 2004. No misconduct by him was
proven. The National Audit Office is investigating the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office because of accusations of victimisation, bullying,
and intimidating its own staff.
Murray later stated that he felt that he had unwittingly stumbled upon
what others called "torture by proxy" and with the euphemism of
"extraordinary rendition". He thought that Western countries moved
people to regimes and nations knowing that torturers would extract
and disclose information. Murray alleged that this practice
circumvented and violated international treaties against torture. If it
was true that a country participated in torture by proxy and it had
signed the UN Convention Against Torture then that country would be
in specific breach of Article 3 of that convention.

Torture methods and devices :

Physical torture methods have been used for throughout recorded

history and can range from a beating with nothing more than fist and
boot, through to the use of sophisticated custom designed devices
such as the rack. Other types of torture can include sensory or sleep
deprivation, restraint or being held in awkward or damaging positions,
uncomfortable extremes of heat and cold, loud noises or any other
means that inflicts physical or mental pain.
Psychological torture uses non-physical methods which are used to
cause psychological suffering. Its effects are not immediately apparent
unless they alter the behavior of the tortured person. Since there is no
international political consensus on what constitutes psychological
torture, it is often overlooked, denied, and referred to in different
names.
Psychological torture is less well known than physical torture and tends
to be subtle and much easier to conceal. In practice the distinctions
between physical and psychological torture are often blurred. Physical
torture is the inflicting of severe pain or suffering on a person. In
contrast, psychological torture is directed at the psyche with calculated
violations of psychological needs, along with deep damage to
psychological structures and the breakage of beliefs underpinning
normal sanity. Torturers often inflict both types of torture in
combination to compound the associated effects.
Psychological torture also includes deliberate use of extreme stressors
and situations such as mock execution, shunning, violation of deep-
seated social or sexual norms and taboos, or extended solitary
confinement. Because psychological torture needs no physical
violence to be effective, it is possible to induce severe psychological
pain, suffering, and trauma with no externally visible effects.
Rape and other forms of sexual abuse are often used as methods of
torture for interrogative or punitive purposes.
Medical torture is a practice in which medical practitioners use
torture to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments which
will enhance torture, or as torturers in their own right. Josef Mengele
and Shiro Ishii were infamous during and after World War II for their
involvement in medical torture and murder.

Torture murder :

Torture murder involves torture to the point of murder as for

punishment in law enforcement agencies of countries that allow
torture. Murderers may also torture their victims to death for pleasure.

Effects of torture :

Organizations like the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of

Torture try to help survivors of torture obtain medical treatment and to
gain forensic medical evidence to obtain political asylum in a safe
country and/or to prosecute the perpetrators.
Torture is often difficult to prove, particularly when some time has
passed between the event and a medical examination, or when the
torturers are immune from prosecution. Many torturers around the
world use methods designed to have a maximum psychological impact
while leaving only minimal physical traces. Medical and Human Rights
Organizations worldwide have collaborated to produce the Istanbul
Protocol, a document designed to outline common torture methods,
consequences of torture, and medico-legal examination techniques.
Typically deaths due to torture are shown in an autopsy as being due
to "natural causes" like heart attack, inflammation, or embolism due to
extreme stress.
For survivors, torture often leads to lasting mental and physical health
problems.
Physical problems can be wide-ranging, e.g. sexually transmitted
diseases, musculo-skeletal problems, brain injury, post-traumatic
epilepsy and dementia or chronic pain syndromes.
Mental health problems are equally wide-ranging; common are post-
traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety disorder. Psychic
deadness, erasure of intersubjectivity, refusal of meaning-making,
perversion of agency, and an inability to bear desire constitute the
core features of the post-traumatic psychic landscape of torture.
The most terrible, intractable, legacy of torture is the killing of desire -
that is , of curiosity, of the impulse for connection and meaning-
making, of the capacity for mutuality, of the tolerance for ambiguity
and ambivalence. For these patients, to know another mind is
unbearable. To connect with another is irrelevant. They are entrapped
in what was born(e) during their trauma, as they perpetuate the
erasure of meaning, re-enact the dynamics of annihilation through
sadomasochistic, narcissistic, paranoid, or self-deadening modes of
relating, and mobilize their agency toward warding off mutuality,
goodness, hope and connection. In brief, they live to prove death. And
it is this perversion of agency and desire that constitutes the deepest
post-traumatic injury, and the most invisible and pernicious of human-
rights violations.

On August 19, 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA)

voted to bar participation, to intervene to stop, and to report
involvement in a wide variety of interrogation techniques as torture,
including "using mock executions, simulated drowning, sexual and
religious humiliation, stress positions or sleep deprivation", as well as
"the exploitation of prisoners' phobias, the use of mind-altering drugs,
hooding, forced nakedness, the use of dogs to frighten detainees,
exposing prisoners to extreme heat and cold, physical assault and
threatening the use of such techniques against a prisoner or a
prisoner's family."
However, the APA rejected a stronger resolution that sought to
prohibit “all psychologist involvement, either direct or indirect, in any
interrogations at U.S. detention centers for foreign detainees or
citizens detained outside normal legal channels.” That resolution would
have placed the APA alongside the American Medical Association and
the American Psychiatric Association in limiting professional
involvement in such settings to direct patient care. The APA echoed
the Bush administration by condemning isolation, sleep deprivation,
and sensory deprivation or over-stimulation only when they are likely
to cause lasting harm.
Treatment of torture-related medical problems might require a wide
range of expertise and often specialized experience. Common
treatments are psychotropic medication, e.g. SSRI antidepressants,
counseling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, family systems therapy
and physiotherapy.

Methods of execution and capital punishment :

For most of recorded history, capital punishments were often cruel and
inhumane. Severe historical penalties include breaking wheel,
boiling to death, flaying, slow slicing, disembowelment,
crucifixion, impalement, crushing, stoning, execution by
burning, dismemberment, sawing, decapitation, scaphism, or
necklacing.

Slow slicing, or death by/of a thousand cuts, was a form of execution

used in China from roughly 900 AD to its abolition in 1905. According
to apocryphal lore, língchí began when the torturer, wielding an
extremely sharp knife, began by putting out the eyes, rendering the
condemned incapable of seeing the remainder of the torture and,
presumably, adding considerably to the psychological terror of the
procedure. Successive rather minor cuts chopped off ears, nose,
tongue, fingers, toes, and such before proceeding to grosser cuts that
removed large collops of flesh from more sizable parts, e.g., thighs
and shoulders. The entire process was said to last three days, and to
total 3,600 cuts. The heavily carved bodies of the deceased were then
put on a parade for a show in the public.

Impalement was a method of torture and execution whereby a person

is pierced with a long stake. The penetration can be through the sides,
from the rectum, or through the mouth. This method would lead to
slow, painful, death. Often, the victim was hoisted into the air after
partial impalement. Gravity and the victim's own struggles would
cause him to slide down the pole, especially if the pole were on a
wagon carrying war prizes and prisoner. Death could take many days.
Impalement was frequently practiced in Asia and Europe throughout
the Middle Ages. Vlad III Dracula, who learned the method of killing by
impalement while staying in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman
Empire, as a prisoner, and Ivan the Terrible have passed into legend
as major users of the method.

The breaking wheel was a torturous capital punishment device used

in the Middle Ages and early modern times for public execution by
cudgeling to death, especially in France and Germany. In France the
condemned were placed on a cart-wheel with their limbs stretched out
along the spokes over two sturdy wooden beams. The wheel was made
to slowly revolve. Through the openings between the spokes, the
executioner hit the victim with an iron hammer that could easily break
the victim's bones. This process was repeated several times per limb.
Once his bones were broken, he was left on the wheel to die. It could
take hours, even days, before shock and dehydration caused death.
The punishment was abolished in Germany as late as 1827.
 Elizabethan England
Torture and Punishment in Elizabethan Times

by Erin Lestikow, Katie O'Fallon,

and Lori Patterson

Torture is the use of physical or mental pain, often to obtain information, to

punish a person , or to control the members of a group to which the tortured
person belongs. During the Elizabethan times crimes were treated as we
would treat a murder today. Stretching, burning, beating the body, and
suffocating a person with water were the most common ways to torture a
person in the Elizabethan times.

The purpose of torture was to break the will of the victim and to dehumanize
him or her. The intent was also to punish, obtain information, extract a
confession from the victim or a third party, or to intimidate the victim and
others.

Torture has been used for at least 2,000 years and has been widespread.
Early Greek and Roman laws specified that only slaves could be tortured, but
soon freemen could be tortured in cases of treason. The right to torture
slaves was abolished in Roman law in AD 240. In the Middle Ages, torture
was included in proceedings of the Catholic Church, which legally employed
torture to obtain confessions.

It was during the times of the Tudors that the use of torture reached its
height in England. Under Henry VIII, torture was frequently used. When
Edward and Mary were on the throne, torture wasn't used as much.
However, when Elizabeth took the throne, torture was used more than in any
other period of history. Queen Elizabeth thought that treason was one of the
worst crimes that could be committed, and the majority of incidents of
torture were for reasons of high treason. Lords and high officials were
exempted, and woman were rarely put through torture.

The punishment for poisoning during this period was to be boiled to death.
Mutilation and branding were also common. People often had their right hand
cut off if they were caught stealing, and on certain occasions eyes were
plucked out with hot pinchers and fingers were torn off.

Some minor cruelties included the pillory, the stocks, the finger pillory, the
ducking stool, and the ranks. The dunking stool was a stool or chair in which
a woman who had been accused of adultery or other crimes would be
repeatedly dunked under water until pronounced dead.

The pillory was another device that was commonly used. There were a
couple of different forms of the pillory. One is still known of today. The
pillory was a frame in the shape of a T, usually placed in the center of
the town. The accused would place his/her hands in the cross bar of
the T with his/her head sticking out of a hole at the top. The accused
then had to stay in the pillory for an extremely long time and would be
harassed by everyone that crossed his/her path.

Another form of the pillory that isn't as widely known was for the feet. This
device had holes through which the toes were forced; then the toes were
crushed with a hammer and wedge. This form of pillory had much less
emotional pain, but the excruciating physical pain was much more enduring.

The harsher the crime committed, the more horrendous the punishment
during this time. A person accused of manslaughter, rape, or robbery, might
find himself trapped in cages hung up in public places where others could
observe his slow death. Right before being pronounced dead, he was taken
down and quartered until the pain finally killed him.

Nowadays these torture devices seem cruel and heartless, but in the
sixteenth century cruel punishment was a normal everyday thing. Under the
Tudors, torture flourished throughout England. The result was a country
living in fear of being the next victims.

Middle Ages Torture :

The Medieval period of the Middle Ages was violent and blood thirsty. In
barbarous times the cruel and pitiless feeling which induced legislators to
increase the horrors of tortures, also contributed to the aggravation of the
fate of prisoners. Torture chambers were included in many castles. Law or
custom did not prescribe any fixed rules for the treatment of hapless
prisoners who faced torture. Different types of torture were used depending
on the victim's crime and social status. Torture was seen as a totally
legitimate means for justice to extract confessions, or obtain the names of

accomplices or other information about the crime. Torture was a legitimate

way to obtain testimonies and confessions from suspects for use in legal
inquiries and trials during the Middle Ages. Facts and information about
various forms of tortures and executions can be accessed from the following
links:
 Information about Tortures during
the Medieval period of the Middle Ages
The Rack Torture Thumbscrews
Scavengers Daughter Pillory
The Brank or Scold's Bridle Burned at the Stake
Ducking Stool Branding and Burning Tortures
Torture by Dislocation Execution by Quartering
Iron Balls Torture Execution by the Wheel
Water Torture Execution by Hanging
The Boot Torture Hung, Drawn and Quartered
Brodequins

Definition of Torture :

The definition of torture is the the deliberate, systematic, cruel and wanton infliction
of physical or mental suffering by one or more torturers in an attempt to force
another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason.
Devices or tools were used to inflict unbearable agony on a victim.

Objectives of Torture :

The objectives of torture were to intimidate, deter, revenge or punish. Or as a tool or

a method for the extraction of information or confessions.

Methods of Middle Ages Torture :

There were many methods of torture which were practised during the
Medieval era of the Middle Ages:

• Ripping out teeth / nails

• Beating
• Blinding
• Boiling
• Bone breaking
• Branding and Burning
• Castration
• Choking
• Cutting
• Disfigurement
• Dislocation
• Drowning
• Flagellation, whipping and beating
 • Flaying
• Roasting
• Genital mutilation
• Limb/finger removal
• Starvation
• Tongue removal

There was even a torture which used tickling as a method to inflict

suffering. Other tortures included the compression of the limbs by
special instruments, or by ropes, injection of water, vinegar, or oil,
into the body of the accused, application of hot pitch, and starvation,
were the processes used in tortures.

Instruments or devices of Middle Ages Torture :

The instruments or devices used in Medieval torture of the Middle

Ages included some of the following terrible tools or machines:

• Boot or Spanish boot

• Branding Irons
• Brank
• The Collar
• Drunkards Cloak
• Ducking stools
• Foot press
• Foot screw
• The Gossip's Bridle or the Brank
• Heretic's fork
• The Maiden
• Pillory
• Rack
• Scavenger's daughter
• Scold's bridle
• Stocks
• Thumbscrew
• The Wheel

Middle Ages Torture and Execution :

A skilled torturer would use methods, devices and instruments to prolong life
as long as possible whilst inflicting agonising pain. However, the customs of
the Medieval period dictated that many prisoners were tortured before they
were executed in order to obtain additional information about their crime or
their accomplices. There were many forms of torture and execution. The

execution method itself was part of the torture endured by prisoners. These
final methods of torture and execution included the following methods:
 • Torture and execution by Fire
• The Sword or the Axe
• Mechanical force
• Quartering
• The Wheel
• The Fork
• The Gibbet
• Spiking
• Dismembering

Middle Ages Torture Chambers and Dungeons :

The torture chambers were located in the lower parts of castles. The
entrances to many torture chambers were accessed through winding
passages which served to muffle the agonising cries of torture victims
from the normal inhabitants of the castle. internal government of
prisons. Torture chambers and dungeons were often very small some
measured only eleven feet long by seven feet wide in which from ten
to twenty prisoners were often incarcerated at the same time.

Middle Ages Torture was condemned in 866 :

The barbarous custom of punishment by torture was on several

occasions condemned by the Church. As early as 866, we find, from
Pope Nicholas V's letter to the Bulgarians, that their custom of
torturing the accused was considered contrary to divine as well as to
human law: "For," says he, "a confession should be voluntary, and not
forced. By means of the torture, an innocent man may suffer to the
utmost without making any avowal; and, in such a case, what a crime
for the judge! Or the person may be subdued by pain, and may
acknowledge himself guilty, although he be not so, which throws an
equally great sin upon the judge." Despite this, and other please, the
practise of torturing victims continued. Medieval Torture was a freely
accepted form of punishment in the Middle Ages and was only
abolished in England in 1640.
 DIFFERENT KINDS OF TORTURES FOR DIFFERENT
REASONS

This bloodfest is exaggerated, but the picture it presents of early 16th-

century . Germany still contains some truth. The religious of this
period created a climate of paranoia in which extremes of cruelty were
considered justified.

Torture and Technology :

‘The basic tools of the torture are his fists and boots’ , ‘Nothing else I
really needed to inflict suffering’. And it is true to say that in a
thousand army barracks and police stations the world over, much
agonizing pain and many hideous injuries have been inflicted by
bullying roughs armed with nothing more elaborate than those.
Alternatively, perpetrators may equip themselves simply with
whatever comes to hand – a knife, a belt, a bottle or a burning
cigarette.

When most of us think of torture, however, we tend to think of

something more hi-tech: a chamber packed with strange machinery,
all wheels and ratchets and sinister-looking hook. This is not simply a
matter of us having seen too many horror film. Down the centuries,
regimes and institutions have developed means of torture far more
sophisticated and systematic than a simple beating.
Theatre of Pain :

Torture has always been theatrical to some extent, with the scope of
dramatise the most diabolical fantasies of the torture as well as his

victim’s darkest nightmares. Examples such as the interminable,

excruciatingly regular drip, drip, drip of the ‘Chinese water torture’,
and poe’s pendulum – swinging closer and closer by infinitesimal,
terrifying degrees – are probably myths; yet, however fanciful, they
are not without some foundation in real fact. Fear and anxiety may be
a potent as pain in overwhelming resistance. The first step in the
inquisition’s torture was simply to show the victim the instruments of
torture and explain their applications. For many heretics, this was
quite enough to secure a recantation.

“Satar Jabar enjoy the hospitality of the Americans in Abu Ghraib

If he falls of the box, he has been told,

the current will flow and His body be

convulsed

by an electric shock,but simply standing

Here like this grows unbearably painful after

several hours”.

Following are the major instruments of torture:

Under lock and key

Stretching and suspension
Applying pressure
Trial by fire
Water torture
Forces of nature
Beating
Cutting and piercing
Shock tactics
Mental cruelty
Capital punishment
 UNDER LOCK AND KEY

The truth is that taking away a prisoner’s freedom has never seemed
sufficiently harsh a punishment in itself, either to the medieval king or
the modern dictator, or, for that matter, to any number of law-abiding
citizens convinced that prison is ‘a holiday camp’. Accordingly, a long
series of measures have been introduced over time to make physical
hardship and discomfort active components of the prison regime.

“The more the place of confinement eliminates sensory stimuli, the

more deeply will the interrogatee be affected”.

Types Of Under lock and Key :

a) Still Surrender:

Close confinement need not, however, be restricted to the

dimensions of a prison cell. Many punishment regimes have
forced the prisoner to remain immobile of his own accord,
Holding any stationary position for long periods becomes at first
exhausting and eventually painful, a fact that tortures have
never been slow to use to great effect. Because it involves no
elaborate equipment, it is not only highly convenient but also
invisible to media watch dogs.
 b) Chains and Shackles :

“Pakistani prisoners wear bar shackles in a photograph taken in

1985. Though popularly associated with the dungeons of a luridly
imagined ‘medieval’ era, such restraints continue in use today,
having proved far too useful ever to discarded”.

Evidence from around the world confirms that shackles and leg-locks
are still very much in use, but the massive clanking chains of popular
imagination have to a large extent been consigned to the past.
‘Bilboes’ were hinged iron rings attached by chains of varying

lengths to a bar fixed on the prison floor, allowing minimal freedom

of movement. They were named after the Spanish city of Bilbao by
an English penal system always quick to attribute its own
barbarisms to Spain.

These sort of instruments were used by gaolers to control groups of

potentially violent prisoners, and to discipline particular individuals.
A cooperative prisoner might be left completely unencumbered, for
instance, and a particularly difficult one weighted more heavily.

“For more cynical warders, the appeal of ‘ironing’ went beyond

administrative convenience”.

c) Mob Rule

The notion that prison should be an orderly realm of regimentation

is a comparatively modern one, and even then it has been
something of a ideal. From medieval times through to the early
18th century, the vast majority of prisoners were not set apart in
cells under careful supervision but herded together and largely left
to themselves.
 Whenever large groups of potentially dangerous men are crowded
together in prison, their keepers will always be tempted to let
them police themselves.

If men are raped by their fellow inmates, women prisoners are

raped too, but by their guards. The 1996 Human Rights Watch
report on rape by male officers in women’s prisons in America
covered only five states. In 1998, five female former inmates of
Dublin, California, won damages after their guards were found to
have pimped them out to male inmates of the prison. Even if the
state does not officially sanction such abuses, surely the
placement of vulnerable prisoners in an abusive prison culture is,
at the very least, conniving with a sort of torture.

d) The isolated soul :

The search for an approach to imprisonment that offers inmates

something more constructive than torture by brutishness and
squalor has been a long and, in many ways, frustrating one. The
movement began in the west with the enlightenment of the 18th
century, when a new mood of optimism about human potential
went hand in hand with a deep distaste for what came to be
seen as the barbarities of old.

There could be no doubt that the penitentiary represented a big

step forward in material comfort. Yet, in its sheer unrelenting
isolation from society and stimulus, the penitentiary’s approach
was, as the London times surmised, positively ‘maniac-making’.

“With the right care, attention and education, might not these
lost souls realize their inmate capacity for good?”.

e) Ritual Shaming :
“A three fold cangue yokes three convicted criminals together in
this photograph taken In the 1890s.”

Prison is not only the arena in which punishment can take the
form of torture . In the past, a range of different punishments
made public examples of miscreants without actually locking them
up. The stock of medieval Europe, a form of outdoor
imprisonment, had been used centuries beforehand.

A punishment that seems largely to have been reserved for

women was the thew, much in use in medieval England.
Essentially a simple neck-ring chained to a post, the thew might
also feature a raised platform to hold the offender up for public
disapprobation or bombardment.

“The stocks and pillory saw service in the colonies long after they
had been deemed unacceptable in Britain.”.

Another form of public exhibition was the cage: a barred or

slatted cage in which minor offenders were displayed to a
disapproving public. In 18th century Newcastle-upon-Tyne in
England, prostitutes were showered with dirt and excrement as
they were paraded naked I wheeled cages around the town.

The precise point at which legitimate punishment becomes cruel

abuse, or close confinement constitutes torture, is, as we have
seen, a matter of difficult debate. What is not in doubt, however,
is the incalculable suffering endured by men and women
throughout the ages, from dangerous murderers to mere nagging
‘scold’.

f) Brank :
These devices had two main features: They exposed the victims to
ridicule by forcing them to wear a ridiculous likeness, and, at the
same time, they inflicted mortification and physical torture by
occluding the victims' mouth or nose and covering their eyes. As we
can see in the picture number 3, the victim's mouth was stopped up
with a ball to prevent her from screaming and moaning.

The long ears represented the ears of an ass. In Europe, many

negative characteristics were attributed to this animal. Even today,
donkeys are considered to be the stupid version of horses and the
epithet "ass" is still used, in Italy, France and Spain, to define a
stupid person.

The version with a pig nose or even a pig head, symbolizes

someone dirty. The word pig, when referred to a person, is
considered offensive in all European languages.

STRETCHING AND SUSPENION

Types of stretching and suspension :

a) The rack :

The procrustean bed finds it perfect analogy in the rack, on

which for many centuries torture victims found themselves
stretched. The Greek dramatist Aristophanes refers to its use in
classical times. Though some racks seem to have been circular,
the victim stretched out upon the revolving rim, most racked
look like some macabre parody of the bed of ease. The victim
would be lain on the floor within a rectangular wooden
framework, his hands firmly bound and stretched out above his
head, with both hands and feet anchored by weights, or later
more often rollers. Levers at each end of the bed loosened or
tightened the cord that held the prisoner’s extremities, lifting
him up slowly until he hung in the air before his questioners.

In later versions of this evolving technologies, transverse struts

across the frame were used to lift the victim to a convenient
height for a torture, earnig the contraption its Spanish name, the
“escalera”, or ladder.

In God’s Name :

“Rack technology was streamlined through the middle ages and

Reaissance, ratcheting gears allowing one man to operate
instruments of torture. Studded rollers add to the agony of this
model favored in German, but its chief advantage to the torturer
was its convenience”.

No organization looms larger in the history of torture than the

inquisition, an institution that brought together the repressive
force of both church and state in an attempt to put down any
religious or political opposition. With the right to arrest and
 interrogate whomsoever they chose, the inquisition’s authority
quickly out stripped that of local bishops and clergy. When a
suspect denied of heresy that was attested to by others, or when
an accused was inconsistent in his answers under interrogation.

b) Manacles and Pulleys :

The pulley or garrucha was, after the rack, the favoured torture
of the inquisition. The pulley offered a sliding scale of pain for
the experienced tormentor, involving both simple squassation
and its excruciating refinement, strappado. For squassation, the
victim’s ankles were bound together to prohibit movement, while
the wrist were tied tightly behind his back, and another longer
rope fastened by one end to this bond and passed over a hook in
the ceiling. His tormentors could then pull on the rope to hoist
him high into the air where he hung in agony, suspended by his
wrist, his shoulders straining at their sockets.

‘Slow strangulation kills the prisoner, the bricks being removed

only one by one ; he is fed throughout to ensure that he stays
alive long enough to suffer’.

APPLYING PRESSURE
 “In the Chinese variant of the Indian kittee, from around
1900, the downward pressure of the rod behind the legs is
rendered still more damaging by the victim’s being forced to
kneel upon a jagged coil”.

Types of applying Pressure :

a) Scavenger’s Daughter :

“The Scavenger’s daughter was an ingenious arrangement of

wrought iron that brought to bear enough pressure to all but burst
the body it constrained. It marked a macabre milestone in the
history of torture technology”.

The invention was the brain child of the lieutenant of the

tower of London in Henry VIII’s reign, Sir Leonard keffington or
Skevington hence by corruption, its popular name. The
Scavenger’s daughter was conceived as the perfect complement to
the Duke of Exeter’s daughter, the rack. The Skeffington’ gives, as
it was also known, worked in the opposite direction from the rack
by compressing the body rather than stretching it. Essentially a
hinged iron hoop in which the victim was made to kneel, hands
tied behind his back, it was then locked shut from behind and
tightened with a screw.

The ideal instrument for the prisoner who had some how
succeeded in withstanding the pains of the rack, the
scavenger’s daughter appealed to tortures on account of its
portability. Far too cumbersome ever to be moved, the rack
might take pride of place in a centre of torture such as tower,
but it could not be taken on hunt for heresy and treason out
in the province.

b) Inquisitional Chairs :
This instrument of torture comes in different versions. We are
first going to examine their common features and, then, their
differences. All of them have common features, in that they
are covered with spikes on the back, on the arm-rests, on the
seat, on the leg-rests and on the foot-rests. The chair
exhibited at the museum of San Gimignano has 1300 spikes,
a real "carpet" of spikes . One version has a bar screwed on
the lower portion of the chair, by the victim's feet, which by a
screw mechanism forced the back of the legs against the
spikes, thus penetrating the flesh of the victim. Another
version had two bars immobilising the victim's wrists forcing
his forearms against the arm-rests resulting in the flesh being
penetrated by the spikes.

Another version had a bar at chest height, to immobilize the

victim's bust, while the spiked seat had holes to allow the
victim's bottom to be 'heated" by hot coals placed under the
seat, causing painful burns, but still keeping the victim
conscious.

The strength of this instrument lies mainly in the

psychological terror it causes and the threat that the torture
will get increasingly worse, conforming to a model where the
pain starts off easy and then gets progressively worse. The
idea is that the Inquisitors can interrupt it at any stage, upon
visual inspection of the damages that have been inflicted.
c) The heretics fork :

This instrument consisted of two little forks one set against

the other, with the four prongs rammed into the flesh, under
the chin and above the chest. A small collar supported the
instrument in such a manner that the victims were forced to
hold their head erect, thus preventing any movement.

The forks did not penetrate any vital points, and thus
suffering was prolonged and death avoided. Obviously the
victims' hands were tied behind their back.

TRIAL BY FIRE

“whatever ingenuities might be imagined, no tool of the

torture is more elementally terrifying than the naked flame.
Here, in an 18th century engraving, one can almost feel the
fierce heat, smell the stench of seared flesh and hear the
screams of suffering”.
Types Of Trial By Fire :

a) Trial By Ordeal :

Fire is not, of course, used by tortures simply on account

of its theological symbolism, as those who have endured
cigarette burns or drips of molten polythene in modern
interrogations can testify. But if the pure pain of seared
human flesh is acute, so too is the terror aroused by the
menacing glow of fire itself, its elemental force and, in
many traditions, its sacral power. Ordeal by fire has long
had a profound resonance in many cultures. From those
eastern mystics who walk unscathed over smouldering
coals to be biblical prophets were flung into furnaces but
emerged untouched, there has been widespread religious
belief that God will spare His own from the flames. From
this follows on, all too easily, the idea that a defendant’s
guilt or innocence might be proved under pain of fire:
Those who have done no wrong, went the reasoning,
would be kept from harm by divine intervention.

Whatever its origins, by the end of the first millennium

the ancient ritual had been cloaked in Christian liturgical
formulae.

b) Trial by Water :

“ The medieval ordeal of boiling water, a imagined by French

engraver of the late 18th century, by which time such practices
very much belonged to the sort of history of ‘superstition’ from
which this illustration has been taken”.

Another trial popular in Europe at the same time was the

ordeal by boiling water, which was similarly administered.
Again, the punishment took place in a church under the
supervision of a priest; in this case, however, the
prisoner had to plunge his hand into a vessel of boiling
water to retrieve a ring or coin or some other object. As
with the ordeal by fire, there would be a long and
elaborate preamble of prayer ad fasting, and vessel and
victim alike would be blessed with holy water.

c) Burning At The Stake :

The most widespread form of death by fire, in Catholic

and protestant lands alike, was undoubtedly that of
burning at the stake. The Spanish inquisition of the 17th
century may have elevated the practice to new heights of
ritual pomp and circumstance, but this terrible puihment
was already well established throughout Europe. This
pious matron had lived in medieval times and
distinguished herself in death by bequeathing in her will a
sum of four shillings a year towards the cost of faggots
for burning heretics.

“One victim boils to death, while the other is consumed

directly by the raging fire in this 18th century engraving
depicting the tortures of an ancient past”.
 WATER TORTURE

Through the terrors of fire are obvious to behold, even from a

distance the potential from cruelty and suffering that lurks in
the life giving force of water is no less devastating. The slowly
maddening drip of water torture is notorious, the finest dribble
directed to a single spot on the flesh is said to be excruciating.

Types Of water Torture :

a) Drinking By Force :

“Witnesses stand around in attitude of parayerful piety

and secretary takes scrupulous notes as a cowled
 executioner of the inquisition puts man or woman to the
water torture. Note the self-draining bench on which the
victims tied down, evidently designed with this very
purpose in mind”.

b) Sink Or
Swim :

“A 19th century artist’s impression of a medieval trial by

ordeal, the bound victim being thrown into consecrated
water. The technique of drowning would, by the early
modern period, have become associated exclusively with
finding witches: previously, though,, it had been far more
general in its application”.

C) Cold Showers :

Sanitation has consistently been a problem for prison

management, but cruel regimes have always been able
to find cold water with which to torment their victims.
Inmates at Birmingham prison in the middle of the 19th
century were stripped of their clothes and doused in icy
water as punishment for the most minor transgressions
of the rules.

FORCES OF NATURE
 “Civilized man has always set himself apart from nature:
the idea that be might form just another level on the
food chain seems degrading to him, hence the
humiliation of these Persian thieves hung out to be
eaten by vultures”.

Types Of Forces Of Nature :

a) Battle Of The Beasts :

“The elephant an executioner, efficiently dispatching a

male factor in India, as recorded by a French traveler in
1871. The hideousness of this form of punishment derives
in part from elephant’s very gentleness as domesticated
beast of burden, its obedient nature here used, perversely,
to crush a human skull”.

Four bas-reliefs from the bomb of Scaurus at Pompeii,

dating from the middle of the 1st century BC, bring to life
the Romans’ own particular version of animal related
torture. The first of the Pompeiian combats show the odds
stacked heavily against a naked unarmed man, twisting
and turning as he tries to evade attack by a lion and a
panther. I the second scene, another unarmed victim
attempts to dodge a charging wild boar. Should he escape
the boar, a ferocious wolf lies in wait his probable fate
given graphic representation in a tableau to his right
depicting a stag being torn apart by dogs or wolves.

b) Cats and Dogs :

 Cats were placed on the prisoner’s abdomen, the goaded
and prodded to attack his flesh.

The use of dogs as tortures’ assistants has been better

documented. Every modern police force has its team of
dogs, trained to attack in the line of work, a discipline that
has all too easily been abused in the course of recent
history. Although there seems to be no compelling
evidence for the claim that the tortures of Pinochet’s Chile
trained Alsatian dogs to rape female prisoners, the threat
of such violation appears to have been routinely made.

c) Buried Alive :

“An excited crowd presses round as, resisting to the last, a

Moroccan mass murderer is immured and left to die in
darkness”.

BEATING

“A beating can be the most casual, ad hoc affair, or it can

be dignified by official ritual”.
 The most basic of all brutalities, requiring no more than a
flurry of blow with fists, and the kicking of feet, beating I
torture at its simplest. The common currency of the
schoolyard bully and the abusive policeman, of the military
interrogator and the violent husband, beating has had a
history far too long to be chronicled.

Types Of Beating :

a) Bastinado :

In the torture of bastinado, or falaka, the prisoner is

beaten on the soles of the feet, usually with the legs tied
together in an upward position. Anything from a thick
truncheon or the finest cane can be used, agonizing
results. Although a very localized assault, the pain in fact
reaches quickly through the body right up to the head.
The torture is redoubled when. After the beating, the
victim is made to walk on rough ground, perhaps giving
the heaviest guard a piggyback.

“East and West are united in brutality I this scene from

the Russian-Chinese frontier, recorded by a French
traveler in 1908” a thief is belaboured with an iron bar
for stealing some fish.

b) Flogging Round The fleet :

 At sea, it was argued, the need for discipline was
overwhelming and justified the most draconian system of
punishments imaginable. Crew members considered slow
to jump to an order or sluggish in applying themselves to
a task were regularly started with a stroke from a canee
or switch by the bosun’s mate. For graver offences
flogging was frequent and fearsome. Under Captain Hugh
Pigot’s command of HMS Hermione, at the end of 18th
century, for example, the flogging of a dozen men a day
was said to be not unusual.

CUTTING AND PIERCING

“Spanish colonists bring civilization and Christianity to

the new world, as witnessed by Fray bartolomme de las
Casas in his eloquent and impassioned(if factually less
than completely reliable) brief account of the destruction
of the Indies(1552).

a) Lingering Death :

Although imaginary, this scene captures the horrors

associated with the Chinese lingchi, or ‘lingering death’.
As with other notorious oriental tortures, however, the
nature of lingchi has almost certainly been exaggerated
in western lore.

b) Stabbing and Mutilation :

The Roman emperor Caligula is said to be Suetonious to

have ordered executions along lines similar to those of
 the traditional Chinese ‘death of a thousand cuts’. By
subjecting prisoners to a series of small stab wounds,
Caligula maintained, they would be able to ‘feel
themselves die’. I another of his punishments, however,
he appears to have acted more in keeping with what
would become known as the Judaeo-Christian tradition:
When he ordered a thief’s hand to be cut off and hung
around his neck I token of his crime.

‘Oriental cruelty, as imagined by a late 17th century

German artist: Torturers lay out a woman on a wooden
framework to be flayed alive ; in the background, a
colleague shows off an earlier trophy”.

c) The maiden of Nuremberg :

The name of this instrument

seems to have originated from a prototype that was built
in the town of Nuremberg. It is also said that this sort of
sarcophagus had the face of a maiden carved on its front
door, probably with the aim of making this horrible
container look more refined.
This instrument has four main features, whose
wickedness, I think, deserve to be analyzed. The inside of
the sarcophagus was fitted with spikes designed to pierce
different parts of the body, but miss the vital organs, so
 that the victim was kept alive, in an upright position.
Its second feature is that the victims were kept in an
extremely confined space to increase their suffering.
Its third feature was that the device could be opened and
closed without letting the victim, who had been pierced
from the front and the back, get away.
Its fourth feature was that the container was so thick
that no shrieks and moaning could be heard from outside
unless the doors were opened. When the sarcophagus
doors were shut again, the spikes pierced exactly the
same parts of the body as before, and thus no relief was
ever possible. This instrument can be defined both a
torture and a death instrument.

SHOCK TACTICS

The electric chair has bee used to execute prisoners in the US

since 1890, yet the application of electricity specifically as a
form of torture is a far more recent development.
Types Of Shock Tactics :
a) Damage Concealed :
A 1991 Amnesty International report illustrates the use of
electrical torture at it worst. It outlines the case of Roberto, a
500 year old university professor living a refugee in Zaire,
who was taken into detention by security forces and badly
beaten. After a short time, however, a senior officer arrived
and told his tormentors to stop; ‘It will leave scars,’ he said,
’and we will get complaints from Amnesty Intl . During the
next 4 weeks, therefore, Roberto’s captors never once laid fist
or foot on their prisoner. Instead , they applied electroshock
batons to the base of his spine, his genitals and other area,
heaping humiliation on top of excruciating pain. ‘On most
 occasions,’ the report said, ‘he vomited, lost control of his
bowels and bodily functions and fell unconscious.’
b) Electrical Restraints :
The application of electroshock as a type of invasive
psychotherapy represented something of a break with
torture tradition. Soon, were reverting to type, forsaking
this quasi-medical model of treatment in favor of one
based on the herding of cattle in stockpens and
abbatoirs.

MENTAL CRUELTY

Manipulation of fear has always been as integral to the

act of torture as the application of physical pain; hence
the tradition of first allowing the perspective victim to
view the executioner’s equipment. Fear is used by
torturers not as an end itself, but for its capacity to break
down an individual sense of self, destroying in the
process all resolve and sense of purpose. Even more
significant than the natural fear of death is the
psychological confusion caused by confounded
anticipation. The man who has fully expected to die is not
disappointed, of course, to find himself still alive, but he
most certainly experiences profound disorientation.

Types Of Mental Cruelty :

a) The theory of fear :

“Will the shots come or won’t they ? For two of his

comrades the answer was a bitter yes , but this prisoner
of the Mexican Civil war could either die instantly or live
to be haunted for the rest of his days by his mock-
execution”.
 Deprivation of sensory stimuli, threats and fear, pain and
other factors may all be used, as may a number of
noncoercive techniques, which the manual lists as
follows: persistence manipulation of time; retarding and
advancing clocks; serving meals at odd times; disrupting
sleep schedules; disorientation regarding day and night;
unpatterned questioning sessions; nonsensical
questioning; ignoring half hearted ate,pts to cooperate;
rewarding noncooperation.’ The common theme of all
these techniques is the disruption of every sort of
certainty, those assumptions, great and small, on which
every one of us depends. Chip away enough at the little
things. Our sense that we know what time of day it is or
what we are talking about in any given exchange and our
sense of individual integrity begins to fall to pieces.

b) Who’s Brainwashing who? :

Although CIA revelations may have shocked readers of

the Baltimore sun, these insights would have come as no
surprise to any of the world’s torturers, past or present.
However, while all torture works on a psychological
level , in that acts upon the body as means of swaying
the mind systematic attempt to bypass physical abuse
and act directly upon a subject’s psyche does seems to
have originated in the 20th century.

Such strategies might even have had lasting results.

Once damaged, the delicate human psyche does not
easily recover.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Types Of capital Punishment :

a) The Bitter Cross :

By the beginning of the Christian era from 1 AD , impalement

was practiced throughout the near and middle east , though
victims are thought to have been pinned to tree trunks with
nails of bronze or iron. Eventually , this punishment would
evolve into what we know as crucifixion, in which the victim is
nailed by hands and feet to a wooden cross or frame.

“This anonymous print dating from 16th century shows

execution by hanging in its most basic form, the victim simply
being turned off from the rungs of a ladder, then left to dangle
and slowly suffocate”.

b) Hung , Drawn and quartered :

Though the drawing of a prisoner on a hurdle through the

streets before cheering, jeering crowds was an essential part of
the punishment, the word drawing actually seems to have
referred to the drawing out of his living entrails. Brought to the
very brink of death by hanging, the prisoner would be cut down
and laid upon a table, his belly slit open and his viscera pulled
out before his eyes. If he were in the hands of a truly skilful
executioner, he would still be alive as his guts were burned in
an adjacent fire and the beating heart was carefully extracted
from his traumatized body. Only then would he be allowed to
die, as he died was cut off and the quartering of his body
began. His carcass was cut into hunks of human meat for
display at different points around the kingdom. Parboiled first,
o it might last longer in the open air, the human meat was set
on spikes in republic places as a warning to anyone else who
might be tempted into the ways of treason.

c) The Garrotte :

This

instrument bears a Spanish name because it was "improved" in

Spain, where it became the official instrument of capital
punishment. It remained in use until 1975, when the last
person to be executed was a young student who was later
found to be innocent. This incident was one of the arguments
used for the abolition of death penalty in that country.
This instrument has very ancient origins. Simply put, a pole
was driven into the ground and a rope was tied around the
victim's neck. But if the pole was not very thick and the rope
was tightened behind the pole, the neck of the victim could be
tightened more gradually and easily released.
This sort of torture was used all over the world as testified by
etchings.
The string tying the victim's neck to the pole could be made of
a material that would shrink once wetted, so that the victim
would slowly suffocate as it dried.
The "improved" Spanish version of this instrument was used for
executions. It had a steel collar, larger in size than the victim's
neck to prevent strangulation, but, at the same time, tight
enough to immobilize the head and the neck.
Preventing neck and head movement was necessary because it
allowed the victim's cervical vertebrae to be penetrated by a
steel tip, moved by a screw mechanism positioned in the rear
of the pole. In theory, such penetration was to be quick and
precise, thus, able to administer a rapid and certain death.
Actually, though, the possibility of error and failure is so high
that I leave it to the imagination of the reader to consider the
suffering it actually inflicted.

d) The Humane Death :

The reluctance of may centuries to renounce to err, has still

meant many thousands dying in agony. The drop , for example
was incorporated into the hanging process to replace slow
strangulation by a quick, clean kill, the fall was supposed to
snap the neck between the third and fourth vertebrae. Precise
calculations of weight were made to ensure the correct result,
but even a slight error could leave the victim dangling, or rip
the head completely from the falling body. The old fashioned
garrotte, as employed in Franco’s Spain, seemed less surgically
neat, yet it was less prolonged for the victim than a botched

hanging.

‘Strongly as it would become associated with revolutionary

France, the guillotine was really just the latest model of an
older device, versions of which had been throughout Europe
since medieval times”.
 AN END TO TORTURE

Laws against torture :

On December 10, 1948 the United Nations General Assembly

adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Article 5 states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Since
that time a number of other international treaties have been
adopted to prevent the use of torture. Two of these are the
United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Geneva
Conventions III & IV.

Ethical arguments regarding torture :

Torture has been criticized not only on humanitarian and

moral grounds, but on the grounds that evidence extracted by
torture can be unreliable and that the use of torture corrupts
institutions which tolerate it.

Organizations like Amnesty International argue that the

universal legal prohibition is based on a universal
philosophical consensus that torture and ill-treatment are
repugnant, abhorrent, and immoral. But since shortly after
the September 11, 2001 attacks there has been a debate in
the United States about whether torture is justified in some
circumstances. Some people, such as Alan M. Dershowitz and
Mirko Bagaric, have argued the need for information
outweighs the moral and ethical arguments against torture.
However, after coercive practices were banned interrogators
in Iraq saw an increase of 50 percent more high-value
intelligence. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the American
commander in charge of detentions and interrogations, stated
"a rapport-based interrogation that recognizes respect and
dignity, and having very well-trained interrogators, is the
basis by which you develop intelligence rapidly and increase
the validity of that intelligence. Others point out that despite
administration claims that water boarding has "disrupted a
number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks", no one has
come up with a single documented example of lives saved
thanks to torture.

The ticking time bomb scenario, a thought experiment, asks

what to do to a captured terrorist who has placed a nuclear
time bomb in a populated area. If the terrorist is tortured, he
may explain how to defuse the bomb. The scenario asks if it
is ethical to torture the terrorist. A 2006 BBC poll held in 25
nations gauged support for each of the following positions:

• Terrorists pose such an extreme threat that governments

should be allowed to use some degree of torture if it may gain
information that saves innocent lives.
• Clear rules against torture should be maintained because
any use of torture is immoral and will weaken international
human rights.

An average of 59% of people worldwide rejected torture.

However there was a clear divide between those countries
with strong rejection of torture (such as Italy, where only
14% supported torture) and nations where rejection was less
strong (Israel showed 43% supporting torture, but 48%
opposing, India showed 37% supporting torture and only
23% opposing).

Within nations there is a clear divide between the positions of

members of different ethnic groups, religions, and political
affiliations. The study found that among Jewish persons in
Israel 53% favored some degree of torture and only 39%
wanted strong rules against torture while Muslims in Israel
were overwhelmingly against any use of torture. In one 2006
survey by the Scripps Center at Ohio University, 66% of
Americans who identified themselves as strongly Republican
supported torture, where as 24% of those who identified
themselves as strongly Democratic. In a 2005 U.S. survey
72% of American Catholics supported the use of torture in
some circumstances compared to 51% of American
secularists.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll "found that sizable majorities of

Americans disagree with tactics ranging from leaving
prisoners naked and chained in uncomfortable positions for
hours, to trying to make a prisoner think he was being
drowned".

There are also different attitudes as to what constitutes

torture, as revealed in an ABC News/Washington Post poll,
where more than half of the Americans polled thought that
techniques such as sleep deprivation were not torture.

“Just a few short years ago, it seemed , torture was all

but obsolete, practiced by only a few pariah states. Now
it is a live issue for the world’s greatest democracies, as
this protest outside the white house demonstrates”.