Torture of Suspected Terrorists - Case Study Example

Torture of Suspected Terrorists 2010 Introduction The terrorist attack on the World Trade Tower in New York on September 11, 2001 shook the entire world and led governments to devise ways to combat such acts of violence in the future. Various anti-terrorism laws were passed in several countries. In particular, President Bush declared United States’ War on Terror that was not only targeted against terrorists within the country but was also aimed at weeding out terrorist outfits across the world. Other western countries, particularly United Kingdom and Australia, followed suit and passed rigid anti-terrorist laws as well. The United Nations, too, convened a special session of the General Assembly and passed specific resolutions in the Security Council. The Global War on Terrorism, in an effort to find the masterminds of the attack and to prevent any such recurrence, bombed Afghanistan in 2001 to destroy Al Qaeda clusters considered to be behind the 9/11 events and Iraq in 2003 on assumption that the latter had amassed weapons of mass destruction (United Nations, 2002). Several questions, however, have been raised regarding the western nations’ response towards global terrorism. It has been argued that anti-terrorism laws passed in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and France impinge on civil liberties and freedom of speech, result in excesses with respect to pre-charge detention, house arrests and surveillance, affecting the fundamental principles of democracies. This paper will discuss whether torture of suspected terrorists is justified or not in the context of anti-terrorist laws framed in western countries after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The background Torture, even though condemned by international law, including the laws of war, is increasingly being used by most governments particularly with the increasing incidents of terrorism across the world. Soon after the 9/11 attack, the USA Patriot Act, or the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" was passed in October 2001 to expand the scope of the government to take anti-terrorist measures. The Act, which remains controversial and thought to be justification for much of the excesses, was renewed on March 2, 2006 when President George W Bush signed it into a law. This Act amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveilance Act (1978) and now included a crime category called “domestic terrorism” and allowed the foreign intelligence to investigate a terrorist who is not a foreign agent. In addition to the USA Patriot Act, the Financial Anti-Terrorist Act, also passed in October 2001, gave powers to the federal government to investigate into financial support of terrorism. The UK government passed the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, giving it the powers to act against individuals suspected of terrorism in the country. By this Act, resident foreigners could be detained without trial if they were suspected of terrorism. On the House of Lords ruling in 2004 that this violated the Human Rights Act of 1988, the government passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2005 following the London blasts that year, allowing the Home Secretary to issue Control Orders that can put suspects under house arrest or restrict phone, telephone and internet use (Liberty). The Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act was passed in Australia 2002, giving the Australian Security Intelligence Office (ASIO) the powers to detain and question people suspected of terrorism as well as freeze their financial accounts. Following this Act, nearly 60 pieces of legislations have been passed in Australia to control terrorism, increasing police powers, detention and deportment, including that of US peace activist, Scott Perkins (Toscano, 2005). In France, the anti-terror bill passed in 2005 increased the government’s powers over electronic surveillance through close-circuit television at various public places and recording and monitoring of Internet access. The law is exceptionally broad and vague in some of the provisions like it perceives it a crime to “associate with miscreants” in situations when people who visit the same café may be sentenced to jail for 20 years. While people can be detained without trial for four to six days, the legislation allows naturalized citizens to be stripped of citizenship in 10 to 15 years (Lerougetel, 2005). In its submission to the House of Lords, the Amnesty International said that under the Anti Terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 of the United States, detention on the presumption of guilt was illegal (Human rights Watch, 2004). The Human Rights Watch opposed Britain’s Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2005 by saying that it went beyond the scope of the government and evidence extracted through torture may be used in the issue of control orders, making it a human right violation. In Australia, critics of the anti-terrorist laws have pointed out that the laws have enabled the police to stifle civil dissent of any kind. The Federal Police, government and the ASIO have used the laws to detain and deport civil rights activists like Scott Perkins who have nothing to do with terrorism (Toscano, 2005). There have been a number of reports of human rights violations by the US military in Iraq as well as in Iraqi custody. A Human Rights Watch report (2005) found that unlawful arrests, long detention and torture on detainees including children have become commonplace in Iraq despite the establishment of the interim government by the United States. The Amnesty International (2004) has also found that more than 10,000 Iraqis have been killed either during the war or later as a result of controversial circumstances in detention. Definition of torture The issue of torture is particularly contentious because it is difficult to define the term torture. Torture may be physical or psychological even as it is distinguished from coercion and brainwashing. While coercion is a harder form of bargaining through threat, brainwashing disallows rational thinking completely, which is not the case in case of torture. Thus, torture is a strategy employed in between coercion and brainwashing. However, torture is accompanied by a constant threat of death or some other harsh punishment and with continuous questioning. As Sussman (2005) notes, however, there is little to differentiate torture from coercion and manipulation in reality, particularly in cases when the suspects are subject to sleep and sensory deprivation, isolation and prolonged questioning. Torture is usually resorted to in order to provoke betrayal of some information, intimidate actual or potential suspects or simply for deriving some sadistic pleasures. In the global war on terror, torture has been used to induce the suspect to give away the location of a bomb or a kidnapper. In most cases, the suspects are in the dark about the location they are kept in, why they are being tortured and what their ultimate fate would be. The suspects are also tortured on the most private parts of their bodies and are exposed completely to their tormentors. Torture is thought to be justifiable as part of prosecution in a just war as a step against those who have not adhered to civilian norms. At times, torture is considered to be preferable to the suspected terrorists to other forms of punishment like long incarceration or death penalty. There is also a high degree of justifiability on the part of lawmakers to use torture than other kinds of punishment even though the Kantian philosophy considers torture as objectionable. According to Sussman (2005), torture provokes the suspect to collude against himself so that he can survive the torture yet avoid other stronger punishment without giving in to the real aims of the torturers. Most of the torture that is inflicted on suspected terrorists is in the nature of interrogational engaged in order to get information out of the suspects. The pain or other distresses like fear, shame, disgust and so on are inflicted deliberately and never accidentally as it might happen in the case of a murder. Hence, the typically punishable offences like murder is often more justifiable than torture in detention in the Kantian view (Sussman, 2005). This is even more distressing because the suspect is under the mercy of the tormentors since the former is not able to protect himself in any way and has no chance to retaliate. This is in contrast to a combat situation when both parties are able to maneuver ways to protect oneself and devise ways to attack the opponent. While the tortured has no moral authority over the torturer and is a passive recipient of the pain, the torturer, on the other hand, faces no moral impediment to inflict torture. Most of the literature on torture refutes justification of torture apart from exceptional cases, which are termed the “ticking-bomb” cases. The United Nations passed the Declaration against Torture in 1975, followed by the UN General Assembly’s Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, placed in 1984 and ratified in 1987. Despite the acceptance of the convention’s definition by most countries, the Amnesty International has found that there have been state-sponsored torture and abuse of power in as many as 100 countries. Laws of war In international law, the defense usually justifies torture over just-combat killing on the ground that the latter leads to greater harm. This is because torture leads to partial destruction or temporary incapacitation of a person while just-combat killing leads to total destruction. But, this does not mean that a lesser harm is justified over a greater harm. This is applicable even in the laws of war, which is usually considered to be the most just law. In war laws, the first basic principle is to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants and inflict the least violence against non-combatants and to minimize the number of casualties. Even when combatants die on the war field, they have had reasonable chance to escape being killed and kill instead. In this context of war laws, torture is violence against non-combatants. This assumes particular significance in the war against terrorism as global terrorism and the combat against it is considered to be a warlike situation. It may be argued that the initial surrender may not necessarily lead to the fulfillment of the motives of the torturer in terms of information collection and so on. The most unacceptable of all torture is usually the situation when the victim is refused defense. Even more objectionable is the use of torture to intimidate potential victims (Shue, 1978). However, it must be remembered that the war laws are never explicit. Neither are instructions over laws explicit or implicit in either war or torture of suspected terrorists. Torture has been justified by some scholars on the ground that the victim is, in any case, an aggressor and it is better to kill or torture one to save thousands (Steinhoff, 2006). According to the “ticking bomb hypothesis”, even liberals have justified the use of torture to get information out of suspected terrorists or to threaten other potential terrorists. According to this theory, the pain and suffering inflicted by terrorists are far more than prisoner abuse cases that have been reported at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Baghram. Besides, since torture will in any case be practiced, it is better to institute a situation that there are “torture warrants”, as lawyer Alan Dershowitz has suggested. However, this argument perversely justifies extreme forms of torture and it is extremely difficult to limit the extent of torture legalized by warrants. Even those who escape being tortured would need to get hold of excuses (Luban, 2005). However, the “ticking bomb” argument of torture has been argued to be misconceived from a consequential approach rather than deontological approach since torture usually fails as a low-cost life saver and instead destroys the democratic institutions by denying victims the choice of defense (Bufacchi and Arrigo, 2006). The sociology of torture The most serious abuse of the powers to torture is in case of rape as torture. Many women have had to endure rape or being stripped naked as part of torture, raped or molested in front of the family. Such forms of torture are aimed at demeaning one’s personhood and deprive the victim’s self-esteem and self-respect (Shue, 1978). Torture is the highest form of tyrannical relationship between the victim and the perpetrator that occurs in isolation (Luban, 2005). Perhaps the most serious torture incident has been that by U.S. soldiers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the fall of 2003. Even as the White House and Pentagon asserted that the situation at Abu Ghraib was "a kind of animal house on the night shift," other observers have argued that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were part of a general interrogation policy that had been started up after 9/11. The American social psychologist Stanley Milgram (1974) had conducted experiments in the 1960s showing that ordinary people can become terrible tyrants very consciously when manipulated by power to carry out such jobs even when that goes against their conscience. The film, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007) showed that this was what happened in the prison. The interviews with soldiers who became involved and watched the torture at Abu Ghraib were found to be clever and communicative young men and women, not trigger-happy, cruel tyrants. Mostly, soldiers posted at Abu Ghraib were not trained to be prison guards, yet only 300 of them were given charges of nearly 6,000 prisoners held in filthy and hazardous conditions. The documentary is bordered by clips from Milgram’s well-known “obedience” studies in the 1960s showing how easily common, obedient citizens could be convinced to impose pain on unfamiliar persons with what they were led to think were high-voltage electric shocks ( Stanley, 2007). For Michel Foucault, power exists everywhere and comes from far and wide, acting as a sort of relation between people, an intricate form of approach, being able to secretly mold another's actions. One of the methods of power/knowledge operation that Foucault mentions is the Panopticon, an architectural pattern, a central plan designed for constant control of convicts in prisons, lunatic asylums, schools, hospitals, and factories where in place of using the rigorous and older methods used to monitor individuals, the modern and apparently democratic state needs another sort of technique to control its citizens. The Panopticon is a potent and refined form of force through the regular surveillance of prisoners, each estranged from the other and thus having no contact-- a modern arrangement letting guards to constantly see inside each cell from their spy-hole in a high mid- tower, unobserved. By continuous surveillance a sensation of being constantly monitored is thus internalized (Foucault, 1977). The photographs of the isolation cells in Abu Ghraib show a similarity to that design of panopticon, an archaic yet prevailing approach to supervision. They depict a disturbing scene of absolute misery, metal cages sit one after the other that can be spied on in a flash — in the hot sand, covered with canvas seemingly to screen and separate the prisoners from one other. Foucault examines the practices of discipline and training linked with penalizing power, implying that these practices were initially nurtured in inaccessible institutional surroundings such as jails, army organizations, hospitals, factories and schools but were slowly employed more largely as systems of social control, the vital aspect of this control is that it is applied straight on the body. Disciplinary practices make physical activities to regular watch (in fact the English translation of surveiller, to be more correct, is, to watch, rather than discipline) facilitating an incessant and invasive control of individual demeanor, aiming at once best practical use of body's ability and efficiency and promoting its value and passivity: 'What was then being formed was a policy of coercions that act on the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, it’s behavior. The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it…Thus, discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, "docile" bodies' (Foucault 1977: 138-9). Foucault depicts disciplinary power in constant watch on mind of detainees by different types of mental torture other than the bodily torture. Foucault thinks that power, in modern societies, is an essentially inventive rather than an authoritarian one (Foucault 1977: 194). Primarily, Foucault asserts that modern systems of power function to make us as subjects operating both as objects and agents of power. Conclusion Thus, torture of suspected terrorists cannot be justified on any ground. Although torture under detention is considered to be unethical, it is resorted to by most governments. Torture is against the norms of war ethics by which a defenseless victim should not be attacked in a combat. Further, the victim of torture usually is unaware of the aims of the tormentors and his ultimate destiny. Works Cited Amnesty International, Iraq: One Year on the Human Rights Situation Remains Dire. March 18. from http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE140062004 Bufacchi, Vittorio and Arrigo, Jean Maria, Torture, Terrorism and the State: a Refutation of the Ticking-Bomb Argument, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol 23 Issue 3, August 2006 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan, Harmondsworth: Peregrine, 1977. Human Rights Watch (2004). UK: Text of Amnesty International submission to House of Lords opposing indefinite detention, October 4. Retrieved from http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR450272004?open&of=ENG-GBR Human Rights Watch (2005). The New Iraq? Torture and Ill-Treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody. Retrieved from http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/26/iraq10053.htm Liberty (2006). Briefing for the renewal of Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2005, February. Retrieved from http://www.liberty-humanrights.org.uk/issues/terrorism.shtml Lerougetel, Antoine (2005). France: Anti-Terrorism Legislation Tramples on Civil Liberties. 5 December. World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/fran-d05.shtml Luban, David, Liberalism, torture and the Ticking Bomb, Virginia Law Review, Vol 91, 2005 Milgram, Stanley, The Perils of Obedience, abridged and adapted from Obedience to Authority (1974), Harper's Magazine, retrieved from http://home.swbell.net/revscat/perilsOfObedience.html Shue, Henry, Torture, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol 7, No 2, Winter 1978 Steinhoff, Uwe, Torture – The Case for Dirty Harry and Against Alan Dershowitz, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vo 23 No 3, 2006 Sussman, David, What’s Wrong with Torture? Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol 33 No 1, 2005 Talkleft (2002). ACLU Demands Surveillance Data, August 22. Retrieved from http://talkleft.com/new_archives/000279.html Toscano, Joseph (2005). Security Legislation Stifles Civil Dissent, September 15. Anarchist Age Weekly. Retrieved from http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/95373.php United Nations (2002). Policy Working Group on Terrorism. August. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/terrorism/a57273.htm Read More