Torture

Probably recorded in the 16th century showing various torture procedures in a castle of the present Slovakia. To the left, the bull of Falaris; to the bottom the garrucha (along with the tortured the court and the scribe who write down everything he says) and in the foreground the pot whose circle is being driven by the executioner (the man lying in the pot is being tortured also by the torment of water).

Torture is the act of inflicting physical or psychological pain and harm for the purpose of punishing, obtaining information or obtaining "evidence" to clarify a crime. Some authors propose a distinction between judicial torture —that which is exercised during criminal proceedings to determine the guilt of the accused, until it was abolished in Europe and America at the beginning of the century XIX— and extrajudicial torture —that exercised by government authority outside the judicial sphere proper, especially when it comes to "political crimes." After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has considered that some interrogations under physical and psychological violence, following the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques", are legitimate and should not be considered torture, a position that has been criticized from various sources.

Definition

Scene of torture in an Assyrian relief.

British historian Edward Peters notes that the definitions of torture throughout history are remarkably similar. Thus, for example, the Roman jurist Ulpian declared that quaestio (as torture was called in Ancient Rome) is "the torment of the body to obtain the truth." In the 13th century a jurist gave an almost identical definition: "Torture is the search for truth by means of torment.". The same is true of another jurist from the XVII century: «Torture is the interrogation through the torment of the body... legitimately ordered by a judge in order to obtain the truth". All these definitions refer to judicial torture.

The currently most accepted definition is the one proposed by the UN in 1975. Article I of the Declaration against Torture approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1975 defines torture as follows:

For the purposes of this Declaration, torture means any act by which an intense pain or suffering, physical or mental, by, or instigation of, a public official, is intentionally inflicted on a person for purposes such as obtaining from it or a third person information or confession, punishing it for an act that has committed or intimidated it, to it or to other persons.

Paul Valadier makes two observations about this definition. Firstly, that there are subtle ways to unbalance a person's psyche, and secondly, that torture should not be restricted to the State, since it can and does occur in various human relationships.

Officers tortured with water to get a confession.

The Tokyo World Medical Assembly held in 1975 incorporates Valadier's observations defining torture as: "Physical or mental suffering inflicted deliberately, systematically or capriciously, by one or more persons, acting alone or under the orders from any authority, in order to force another person to give information or make them confess for any other reason."

In the case of illegal coercion, the first objective is the subjugation and breaking of the detainee's self-esteem and moral resistance, so that the tortured person more easily accedes to the wishes of the torturer or executioner, whatever these are. be.

The objective can be varied: to obtain a confession or information from the victim or from a third person, as revenge for an act committed by the victim or by a third person, as a prelude to an execution (in which case one speaks of death-ordeal) or simply for the morbid and sadistic entertainment of the torturer.

Torture and ordeal

Table of torture.

Torture introduced a greater rationality than the ordeal regarding the method of proof because, as the Spanish jurist Francisco Tomás y Valiente affirms, "self-condemnation seems closer to the material truth, that is, the confession of guilt, who condemns her by virtue of magical rites". Torture maintained an obvious analogy with the sacrament of penance, since in both cases the imposition of punishment was based exclusively on self-incrimination, although maintaining a fundamental difference: in penance the confession is free and in torture it is extracted by coercion. In this sense, torture was close to an ordeal, as enlightened thinkers have already pointed out. Cesare Beccaria affirmed that the difference between torture and ordeal "is only apparent and not real. There is as little freedom now to tell the truth between spasms and tears, as there was then to prevent without fraud the effects of fire and boiling water". Gaetano Filangieri wrote: "If torture is considered as a criterion of truth, one will find something as fallacious, something as absurd, as were the Judgments of God".

Tomás y Valiente, after highlighting the irrationality of both methods of proof and that torture is so unjust and that it can be more cruel than ordeal, affirms that torture "as a procedure to find out the truth, although certainly It fails in many cases, and although it will surely elicit more confessions than truthful confessions, it is undeniably more effective than any ordalic magical rite. Especially considering that its effectiveness operates in a double sense: as a means to discover the truth, and as an instrument to intimidate the tortured and those who potentially feel in their place. If torture were not effective in its double inquisitive and intimidating effect... it would not have survived for centuries nor would it have reappeared in our [20th century]".

Torture and corporal punishment

Mártir do Fanatismo (c. 1895). Painting by José de Brito

The different forms of torture have also been applied as corporal punishment to those guilty of certain crimes.

The Hebrews hung slanderers and idolaters on a pole, and stoned blasphemers. The shovels or the verberation was a cruel punishment under whose blows criminals sometimes died. The Persians inflicted various kinds of torture as punishment on condemned prisoners (see Torture in Persia).

The martyrdom of Saint Philipfrom Ribera.

In Ancient Rome, slaves and people from less favorable strata and conditions were sentenced to hanging. Before nailing the prisoners to the tree, they used to whip them with straps, branches or other instruments prepared for that purpose. Plutarch says that the inmates sentenced to death on the stake were obliged to carry it to the gallows themselves. Commonly, they were secured to the tree by means of nails, although other times they were tied with ropes. This torment was so common among the ancients that the Latins gave the name crux and its derivatives cruciatus and cruciare a meaning that refers to all luck of sorrows and torments.

The custom of cutting off the head with an ax is very old. The Romans used it from the earliest days of the founding of their city, which is why the lictors carried a lock between their beams for this purpose. In Athens and Rome, traitors to the homeland were punished by throwing them into a deep ditch or from the Tarpeian rock, respectively. Mecio Fufecio, king of Alba Longa, was dismembered by order of Tulio Hostilio for having violated the alliance that he had made with the Romans.

Legal justification for the use of torture today

Torture in Abu Ghraib Prison (2003)

In 1971, General Jacques Massu, head of the French army that served in the Algerian war, published a memoir entitled The True Battle of Algiers in which he justified the use of torture in Algeria on the basis of the circumstances of the moment and that military necessity imposed it. As Edward Peters has noted, "the book is a classic example of an argument commonly used to legitimize torture, an argument that Massu did not invent, nor was he the only one to cite: […] the argument that torturers can to be responsible servants of the State in times of extreme crisis". The book received an immediate response from Alec Mellor -who in 1949 had already published a highly resonant book entitled La torture - with his work Je dénonce la torture ; by Jules Roy, author of J'accuse le general Massu; and Pierre Vidal-Naquet who published the French translation of his book Torture: Cancer of Democracy, originally published in English in 1963 and in which he denounced that the cancer of democracy was not torture itself but his indifference to her, which was followed by Les Crimes de l'armée francais ['The Crimes of the French Army', 1977], in which he described the horrors of repression during the Algerian War, expanding on an earlier book published in 1962 under the title Raison d'etat ['Reason of State'].

The legal justification for the use of torture by the regimes that practice it is mainly based on the figure of the annulment of all legal protection of the detainee. In the case of detainees accused of terrorism or subversive political activities, as is the case of many historical or current dictatorships or in the case of the actions of some armies in current wars, the reasoning follows several points:

• It is stated that the detainee does not have the status of a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions. This is justified as a result of the fact that the detainee is not part of a political force, he does not wear a uniform that distinguishes him as a combatant, his leaders are not accessible or recognized as possible negotiators of a peace and the hostilities that his group practises are irregular warfare that violates all the laws of war.

• It is established that it is a common criminal of high danger, whose extraordinary criminal action has forced the government to use armed force to stop it.

• As he has been arrested by the armed forces, he has to be interrogated preliminary by the armed forces before being made available to ordinary police and magistrates.

• Extraordinary military or police interrogation is not part of criminal proceedings, but the detainee is not a prisoner of war that the International Humanitarian Law protects.

The counterintelligence interrogation thus becomes, and by virtue of the applied concentration logic, a space of total defenselessness of the detainee. This is where the detainee's vulnerability or legal (and also psychological) defenselessness resides, which is the basic condition for successful intelligence interrogation.

History

The Chinese practiced torture as part of their judicial procedures, called basans. From this derives the verb "basanixein", which means "verify". More only slaves and, sometimes, foreigners were tortured. The Romans also followed the same principle during the Republic and the High Empire. The key Roman text on torture appears in Justinian's Digest (Chap. XVIII, Book 48). There it is warned that confessions extracted under torture are insecure. In addition, torture of children under 14 years of age and pregnant women was prohibited.

Instruments of torture.

In Roman law, torture was admitted as a method of proof (mainly in the Digest, 48, 18 and in various imperial constitutions). The Breviary of Alaric and the Visigoth Liber Iudiciorum collect these provisions taken from the Theodosian Code.

In ancient times, torture was used as a means of proof in criminal proceedings to obtain the confession of the accused.

In the High Middle Ages, torture was not used but rather an ordeal to determine the truth or falsity of an accusation and the guilt or innocence of a person (what Tomás y Valiente called "bilaterality of evidence"). Also, it was called "Gods judgment".

Don Rodrigo Calderón in tormentJosé María Rodríguez de Losada. 1865. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

Torture was replacing ordeal in the medieval West from the reception of Roman law that occurs during the so-called revolution of the twelfth century. The Church was the first to introduce its use during the papacies of Alexander III (1159-1181) and Innocent III (1198-1216), although its definitive regulation did not take place until the bull Ad extirpanda promulgated in 1252 by Pope Innocent IV. In common law, it was the Italian communes that began to use and regulate torture as a means of proof in criminal proceedings and then it spread through the different monarchies, at the same time that the study of Roman law spread in the Universities.

In the Late Middle Ages, it was regulated and began to be applied (a means of proof in the Canonical Process and, with the passage of time, it was used in Common Law). It continued until the s. XVIII.

In the Middle Ages, the criminal process was of two types: accusatory, and inquisitive, the first required an accuser, and the second was given only through investigations. The inquisitive method was based on written evidence and testimonies, giving the greatest weight to the confession, which inevitably led to the use of torture as a criminal procedure.

Its abolition began in France and spread to all the countries of Europe throughout the s. XIX. It has disappeared from legislation and judicial practice, but legally abolishing it does not imply its real disappearance.

In World War II and today, the Gestapo, the KGB, the Kripo, the CIA, and the FBI have been denounced as state agencies that use torture for their own purposes^{[citation needed]}. Currently, it is present in those totalitarian States as a means of security, especially for "political crimes".

Forms and instruments of torture

Fictitious image of a tortured by the Inquisition. Recorded of the centuryXVIII.

Torture can be carried out in various ways. Physical harm can be caused by blows, broken bones, muscle tears, castration, crushing, cuts, electric shocks, disfigurement, burns, application of extreme temperatures, ingestion of chemicals or sharp objects, bathing with caustic chemicals, drowning, rape, sleep deprivation, or awkward body postures.

Psychological damage can be done through sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal or physical humiliation (nudity during interrogations), manipulation of information about the detainee or their relatives, lying (eg false information about harm suffered by friends and relatives), physical and mental disorientation, or the simulation of physical torture or executions that contribute to demoralization. In general, what is sought with psychological torture is the breakdown of the detainee's self-esteem and moral resistance, so that the interrogated person more easily accedes to the interrogator's wishes, whatever they may be.

Camilla to torture electrically used by intelligence services of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

In the Middle Ages the criminals were sometimes hung from a post, other times from a tree and they used to bandage the face of the criminal during the torture. Sometimes the prisoners were suspended from one foot only and a weight was tied to their necks, other times from one or both arms and they were tied tightly until they expired. They also used a cord to tighten the neck of the criminal and drown him, as was done in Rome with Lentulus, one of the accomplices in the Catiline conspiracy. And this ordeal was in such an infamous and shameful way that the pontiffs forbade burying the corpses of those who had suffered it.^{[citation required]}

The torture of the wheel, invented in Germany in times of disorder, was very rare before the year 1538 and was arranged against robbers on the royal road. Women have never been sentenced to it for reasons of decency.

Forms and instruments of torture

Torture chair.

Current methods of torture

Edward Peters in his book on torture offers the following account:

Somatic torture

• Hits: punches, spikes, clamps, gunshots, gunshots, jumps on the stomach.
• Falanga (falka): hit the floor with rods.
• Toy of the fingers: a pencil is placed between the victim's fingers that are then violently tightened.
• Telephone: the torturer strikes with the palm of his hand the victim's ear, imitating a telephone receiver; which causes the tympane's membrane to be broken; Telephone It can also consist of beatings against a helmet that puts the victim. Once broken, cold water can be inserted into the ear, causing a very intense pain that can last between 6 and 8 hours until it drains completely; the draining process can take between 24 to 48 hours; in case of not draining it can cause an infection and in the worst case, death.
• Electricity: exploration with pointed electrodes (electric strip); cattle prickes; metallic gratings, metal beds to which the victims are tied; the " dragon chair" (Brazil), an electric chair.
• Burns: with cigarettes or cigars on, electrically heated rods, hot oil, acids, lime alive; bilging in a hot grill to red (e.g., the "hot sauce" used by SAVAK agents); scrubbing mucosas, or acids and spices directly on the wounds, caustic potassium, caustic soda.
• Submarine: the immersion of the victim's head in water (often flooded water) to the edge of the asphyxiation (called "Asian torture" in Argentina, and elsewhere "the bathtub").
• Dry submarine: the victim's head is covered with a plastic bag or blanket, or the mouth and the nose windows are covered to reach the suffocation point.
• Suspension in the middle of the air: the Brazilian " parrot" where the victim is suspended with the knees bent on a metal rod and rigidly tied to the wrists.
• Prolonged placement in forced positions and body tension.
• Stay long standing.
• Traction alopecia: rinse the hair.
• Nail extraction.
• Sexual rape and assault.
• Insertion of foreign bodies into the vagina or rectum.
• "Mess of operations": table to which the victim is tied with straps, or to be stretched by force, or only affirmed below the bottom of the back, which makes it necessary to support the weight of the victim outside the table; in some countries it is called the O.R..
• Cold exposure: cold air immersion or cold water.
• Water deprivation: only the victim is given dirty, salty or soapy water.
• Forced consumption of foods in poor condition or deliberately heavily seasoned with spices.
• Dental torture: forced tooth extraction.

Psychological torture

• Presence torture sessions of others: relatives, children.
• Threats of having to witness the torture of others.
• Simulated executions.
• Sleep deprivation.
• Exhibition continues to light.
• Exposure for prolonged times to strong and annoying sounds.
• Lonely confinement.
• To remain incommunicado (to be maintained without any human communication).
• Total deprivation of sensory stimuli.
• Conditions of detention.
• Threats.
• Provoke shame; strip; forced participation in a sexual activity or be forced to witness it.

Pharmacological torture

• Enforced application of psychotropic drugs.
• Enforced application of nervous stimulants (histamines; aminacin; peracin-stelacin trifluoro).
• Injection of fecal matter.
• Forced ingestion of sulphur or poison (tallium).

Aftermath of torture

Edward Peters presents in his book the following relationship:

Somatic sequelae

• Gastrointestinal disorders: gastritis, disseptic symptoms similar to the ulcer, regurgitation pains in the epigastrium, irritable spinal colon.
• Straight injuries, sphincter abnormalities.
• Skin injuries, histologic injuries.
• Dermatological disorders: dermatitis, urticaria.
• Difficulties walking, wounds on tendons.
• Joint pains.
• Brain atrophy (analogue to brain post-conmotion syndrome, determined by axial tomography of the brain by computer) and organic brain injury.
• cardio-pulmonary disorders, hypertension.
• Dental disorders.
• residual traumatic pain.
• Gynecological symptoms: inflammation of internal sexual organs, menstrual pains.
• Deterior of the ear, lesions in the eardrum.
• Decrease in the pain threshold.
• You're like indirect sequel.

Psychological aftermath

• Anxiety, depression, fear.
• Psychosis, border psychosis.
• Inestability, irritability, introversion.
• Concentration difficulties.
• Lethargy, fatigue.
• Inquietud.
• Decrease in the control of expression and emotion.
• Inability of communication.
• Loss of memory and concentration.
• Loss of the sense of orientation.
• Insomnia, nightmares.
• Deterior of memory.
• Headaches.
• Lighting.
• Visual disturbances.
• Alcohol intolerance.
• Parestesia.
• Vertigo.
• Sexual disturbances.

Social consequences of the aftermath of torture

• Deterior of the social personality.
• Inability to work.
• Inability to participate in recreation.
• Destruction of one's own image.
• You're in the family.
• Inability of socialization.

Other psychological consequences of torture.

Reexperiencing the trauma

Avoidance and emotional blunting

Getting hyper-arousal

Decrease self-esteem and a positive sense of the future.

Dissociation, depersonalization

dysfunctions of a sexual nature

The fight against torture

The fight against torture has a specific international instrument: the Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and its Optional Protocol.

In addition, torture is condemned in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Other legal norms of international law that include torture are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The International Day of Support for Victims of Torture is celebrated on June 26.

The criminalization of the crime varies according to the regulations of each country, but overall and generically, torture for criminal purposes is considered to be «actions committed by officials or authorities, or the explicit or implicit consent of the same so that third parties execute them, with the aim of obtaining a confession or information from a person, as well as physical or mental punishment that involves suffering and suppresses or diminishes the faculties of the tortured person or in any way affects their moral integrity».

Around the world, various Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) mobilize to exert pressure on States that practice torture, for example Amnesty International (AI) or the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT).

One of the main arguments against the use of torture or degrading or inhuman treatment is that any person subjected to it is capable of recognizing themselves as the author of anything, however absurd, as long as they stop suffering.

The Rehabilitation and Research Center for Victims of Torture (RCT) was founded in Copenhagen in 1980 and remains the world's leading center for the treatment of victims of torture, and that emerged five years later the International Council for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture (IRCT), which is the main world organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of victims of torture, currently made up of 144 associations based in more than 70 countries (twelve of them Latin American).

Spanish Legislation:

• Spanish Constitution (CE): art. 15: "Everyone has the right to life and to physical and moral integrity, without in any case being subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The death penalty is abolished, except as may be provided by military criminal laws for wartimes."
• COP: articles 173.1 - 177

Legal Instruments in the United States

• La Act on the Protection of Victims of Torture 1991 (TVPA,English acronym of Torture Victim Protection Act. Pub.L. 102-256, HR 2092, 106 Stat 73, promulgated on 12 March 1992) is a law that allows the filing of civil claims in the United States against individuals who, acting in their official capacity for any foreign nation, committed torture and/or extrajudicial executions.

• The Victims of Trafficking and the Law on Protection against Violence (TVPA, for its acronym in English) is a U.S. federal law, passed as a law in 2000 by the U.S. Congress. U.S. It provides protection for persons in the country illegally, who may be victims of human trafficking.

Istanbul Protocol

This is a Manual for the effective investigation and documentation of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It was approved by the United Nations Organization in 1999:

• Internationally recognized guidelines
• Documentation for the validity of the test
• Ending impunity
• Non-binding
• Adopted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNO) in 2000.

In addition, valid documentation of the methodology and signs that point to a case of torture will be carried out. This Protocol contains:

• Standards and procedures
• How can recognition and documentation of symptoms of torture occur?
• Requirements
• Evidence
• International Standard applied
• Legal and health codes
• Legal investigation: objectives, effective principles and documentation, Procedure and Commission of inquiry. Within the procedure you can distinguish:
  • Appropriate body
  • Interview with both victims and witnesses: and background assessment techniques
  • Ensuring and obtaining evidence
  • Medical evidence
  • Photographs

Torture in the cinema

• The film Garage Olimpo deals with a detention centre during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, in which prisoners were tortured.
• The movie The Crime of Cuenca, from Pilar Miró, recounts real facts of the tortures received by Spanish peasants at the hands of the Guardia Civil at the beginning of the centuryXX. ([4]).
• The movie He went out or the 120 days of Sodomaby Pier Paolo Pasolini, four libertine fascists kidnap nine boys and nine girls to submit them to 120 days of physical, mental and sexual torture.
• The movie The experiment, by Oliver Hirschbiegel, deals with a sociological experiment in contemporary Germany between two groups: jailers and prisoners ([5]).
• The movie The road to Guantanamo, by Michael Winterbottom collects the story of several British detainees transferred to the Guantánamo Bay Military Base. It contains precise descriptions of the techniques and procedures of physical and psychological torture there practiced.
• The movie Hostel it deals with a place where certain people pay to satisfy their macabre fantasies, torturing their victims by using several utensils: electric saws (such as carpentry employees), scissors, tongs and even a lighter to perform welds.
• The saga Saw He deals with a murderer named Jigsaw, who tortures the people he himself considers "do not value his life, have transgressed human limits of what is acceptable, or has wasted it to harm himself or others." The torture devices, designed by the same Jigsaw, have complex mechanisms that cause one or more damage to the body of their victims (some devices are faithful to those used in the past). It is interesting to emphasize that the torture that each person receives in the film is, in itself, a cruel but cathartic metaphor.
• In the successful film Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir DogsThere is a famous scene in which you can see the character "Mr. Blond" Michael MadsenTo torture the young policeman "Marvin Nash" Kirk BaltzCutting his ear and bathing it in gasoline at the rhythm of the song Stuck in the Middle with You.
• In the Argentinian film La Noche de los Lápices (based on the actual fact that occurred on September 6, 1976 in Argentina, at the beginning of the auto-denominated military dictatorship "Proceso de reorganización nacional"), the seven students receive different tortures, including electricity through picanas.

Torture in the theater

Ariel Dorfman's play Death and the Maiden explores the consequences of torture. Another work, Pedro y el Capitán, by Mario Benedetti, takes place exclusively in the dialogue between a torturer and a prisoner in an indeterminate Latin American dictatorship of the XX.