The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

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03/10/2004) Moreover, the character of the evidence presented varies widely in quality: in addition to the 11 individuals who were charged with having personally met Osama bin Laden, others were identified as enemy combatants for possessing rifles or a Casio watch, wearing olive drab clothing, sleeping at a guest house used in the past by al Qaeda, and having been conscripted into the Taliban's armed forces. (p. 17) One detainee was declared an enemy combatant on the following evidence: Detainee is associated with the Taliban. The detainee indicates he was conscripted into the Taliban. Detainee engaged in hostilities against the US or its coalition partners. The detainee admits he was a cook's assistant for Taliban forces in Narim, Afghanistan under command of Haji Mullah Baki. Detainee fled from Narim to Kabul during the Northern Alliance attack and surrendered to the Northern Alliance. 97 Problematically, the apparent assumption that those fighting with the Taliban, including those conscripted by force, could be classified as dead-enders, or as 'the worst of the worst' in the words of Donald Rumsfeld is somewhat attenuated by the recent finding that over 90% of southern Afghanis (i.e., those most likely to support or have been under the control of the Taliban) were unaware of the link between the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, even almost nine years after the fact. (ICOS, p. 28) The limited nature of the allegations against most detainees, as well as the fact that some of the evidence alleged stemmed from (potentially coerced) denunciations by other detainees must make us question how much intelligence these individuals would be able to provide. This suspicion is strengthened when we consider that the highest value detainees, high ranking members of al Qaeda and the Taliban, were not sent to GTMO until September 2006. Until then, these individuals had been held by the CIA in so-called 'black sites,' and had been hidden from the Red Cross. (ICRC, 2007) Nonetheless, interrogations did proceed against detainees, and there are several indications that these interrogations were essentially coercive. On January 5 th , 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a group of emails from FBI agents at GTMO complaining of abusive methods used 97 From the summary of evidence for an unidentified detainee, quoted in Denbeaux and Denbeaux, p. 17. 111
y military interrogators. (Washington Post, 06/01/2005) A second group of 54 FBI emails dating between 2002 and 2004 was released in February 2006, wherein the FBI agents “tried to get the military interrogators to follow a less coercive approach and warned that harsh methods could hinder criminal prosecutions of terrorists because information gained illegally is inadmissible in court.” (Monterey County Herald, 24/02/2006) In addition, many of those subsequently released from GTMO have claimed to have suffered torture and by members of the US military, including as a means of extracting confessions and intelligence, including protracted interrogations, sleep deprivation, induced hypothermia, stress positions and the injection of unknown pharmaceuticals. (New York Times, 07/07/2009; Washington Post, 14/05/2004, 22/04/2008; Observer, 03/10/2004) While the US military has consistently denied these allegations, the standard operating procedure manual for Camp Delta (on of the major camps in GTMO) prepared after Gen. Geoffrey Miller took charge as commanding officer was careful to include a categorization of detainees according to how much access the ICRC should be given. These categories were: 'Unrestricted,' where the ICRC was given full access to detainees; 'Restricted,' where the ICRC could only inquire about a detainees 'health and welfare'; 'Visual,' where the ICRC could was allowed to see, but not speak to, a detainee; and 'No Access,' where the ICRC would be kept completely ignorant of the detainees conditions. (JTF-GTMO-CG, 28/03/2003, p. 17.1) One potential rationale for this policy may have been the decision to encourage military guards to act as adjuncts to the interrogation proceedings by 'softening up' detainees: a policy that was replicated at Abu Ghraib after Gen. Miller was brought in at the end of August 2003 in order to reform interrogation practices. (Taguba Report, p. 8) This policy should be understood as a means of tying the general conditions of detainees to their cooperation with their interrogators: in other words, the torture was no longer confined to the interrogation room itself, but could be expected to continue even when questioning was not underway. In fact, the ICRC has referred to GTMO as “principally a centre of interrogation rather than detention.” (Steyn, p. 7, 8) As the ICRC put it in a confidential report to the US government in 2004, GTMO procedure had been set up to break the will of detainees, making them dependent on their interrogators through “humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, [and] use of forced positions. (…) The construction of such a system whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than (…) a form of torture.” (as quoted in the New York Times, 30/11/2004) The US government has repeatedly claimed that the Guantanamo site has been a crucial 112
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEG
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This work is dedicated to my wife,
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TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vii 1. T
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ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the Se
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judged by their effects. The deonto
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etter than chance on average, no ma
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from fiction, and also in the time
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the cases differ in how well inform
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characterization by method. Torture
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gather such evidence was strong, to
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ineffective. Something must prevent
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The description which it would be n
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powerful themselves. 21 While histo
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known by the misnomer 'torture-ligh
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substitute for intelligence gatheri
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This lack of good data on torture t
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found that the procedure can cause
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captive who has faced torture, and
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state cannot credibly commit to pla
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incentive not to present as favorab
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units, those engaged in the applica
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of causal mechanisms in a very dire
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the threats they face are real, whe
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3.1. Introduction. CHAPTER 3 THE WI
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discovered by Sir Thomas Newton and
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two, and the execution of the convi
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years preceding the outbreak at Sal
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these women - non-Church members, p
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Hubbard) and four grown and married
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innocent, and recalled that when he
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crowd was deeply and troublingly mo
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it was precisely in these terms tha
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came to an end. Misogyny was all to
Page 67 and 68: only the witch-trials that brought
Page 69 and 70: partners in their own (apparent) de
Page 71 and 72: possibility would be to question th
Page 73 and 74: John Bridges (whose own wife and da
Page 75 and 76: she again broke down and named seve
Page 77 and 78: forcing the already convicted to re
Page 79 and 80: We can thus see Tituba's confession
Page 81 and 82: Samuell Parris. 70 The strongest ev
Page 83 and 84: order to purge political dissidents
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Page 87 and 88: torture - the state will apply it e
Page 89 and 90: time, the government in Paris was c
Page 91 and 92: for two reasons - first, because Me
Page 93 and 94: The Soummam conference in the Summe
Page 95 and 96: one of the primary justifications f
Page 97 and 98: DOP in particular is instructive fo
Page 99 and 100: us stops in the city center. These
Page 101 and 102: one that would turn the dangers of
Page 103 and 104: dismantling of the ZAA organization
Page 105 and 106: found in the literature: the revela
Page 107 and 108: In fact, the use of torture did hav
Page 109 and 110: e.g.), by March (when the DPU had b
Page 111 and 112: Paul Teitgen appears to have been c
Page 113 and 114: the French public. 95 Secondly, the
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Page 117: the reasons for holding the detaine
Page 121 and 122: fact come verbatim from a 1957 jour
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Page 125 and 126: to those believed to have informati
Page 127 and 128: name for metanetwork analysis. 102
Page 129 and 130: other words, the CIA High Value Det
Page 131 and 132: Padilla was accused by KSM of plott
Page 133 and 134: and an enemy of the United States,
Page 135 and 136: alternative mechanism) by Darius Re
Page 137 and 138: York Times, 09/12/2005) Insofar as
Page 139 and 140: these interrogations were conducted
Page 141 and 142: al-Qaeda is structured, names of in
Page 143 and 144: CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION: The Misleadin
Page 145 and 146: problem by the authorities - and ye
Page 147 and 148: situations (France in Algeria and V
Page 149 and 150: Jack Bauer was used as justificatio
Page 151 and 152: Biderman, Albert D. “Effects of C
Page 153 and 154: Crelinstein, Ronald and Alex Schmid
Page 155 and 156: History Teacher. 30:4 (1997): pp. 4
Page 157 and 158: International Council on Security a
Page 159 and 160: Lewis, Neil A. “Red Cross Finds D
Page 161 and 162: Obuchowski, Chester W. “Algeria:
Page 163 and 164: Schiemann, John W. “Interrogation
Page 165 and 166: Barack Obama is Inviting the Next A
Page 167 and 168: United States, Department of Defens
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Patrick Armshaw
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