Torture In Our Time

For us, torture is a sure sign of barbarianism. Who would have thought that the inclusion of torture and torture-like methods in the treatment of prisoners would return to the West?

Among the expectations many around the world have for the American president-elect is that he will stop the infringement of the rights of prisoners by incarcerating them in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. The hope must be that Mattias Gardell’s new book about the return of torture will be left standing as an epilogue of an embarrassing chapter in our time. (Tortyrens återkomst, Leopard publishing, Stockholm).

It is a glum reminder when Gardell shows the deep roots that torture of prisoners have in the West. It only ended after the Age of Enlightenment some time into the 1800’s, until the tyrants of the last century revived barbarianism on an unprecedented scale. Even back in Ancient Greece, Aristotle made a sober assessment: “embarrassing interrogation,” as it used to be called, might very well force a criminal to talk, but we cannot trust such a statement, because the one being tortured can say anything to escape from the pain. This unreliability has been a problem with torture as a means of interrogation for all time periods, from Aristotle to Guantanamo.

Mattias Gardell is a historian specializing in religion, and has written multiple books on Muslim extremists. That means he knows a lot about the clientele [prisoners] at Guantanamo.

He describes how America under President George W. Bush in its “war on terror” came onto the path to reinstate torture and torture-like conditions. The panic reactions after the fall of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 cleared the way. The judicial protection against torture was dismantled step by step. At first, the President instated, by being Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, a military exception from normal legal procedures: he allowed for the internment of suspicious people without law or sentence. Facilities were built outside the territory of the United States, like Guantanamo, where the business was not bound by American law to the same extent. The President announced that the Geneva Convention, with its rules of civilized principles for warfare, could be set aside in certain cases. The reason was that nothing should impede its muscle in the war on terror.

A legal foundation for the ruthless treatment of prisoners was given through interpretations from prominent lawyers of the government. The most important justification was that hard-handed methods could save innocent lives from terrorism, and that the evildoers who murdered innocent people did not deserve better. The next step was to keep America away from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and other serious human rights violations. With a new law, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Gardell claims torture was legalized in practice. In addition, many of the prisoners were transferred to cooperating countries, especially in the third world, which are not as particular about the way prisoners are treated. Gardell analyzes the smooth transition from general harsh methods to mistreatment and humiliation in Guantanamo, in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and elsewhere.

The legal decay had a global scope. The war on terror can justify many things.

With the change of power in America, one can hope that this is a look back on a side track headed towards termination.