Most often, state authorities and politicians who support torture are not the ones who inflict it personally. They leave to others to enforce their policies and apply torture methods, which affects them on a psychological level by being rooted deeply within their brain circuit. This means that both victims and perpetrators face a range of devastating psychological consequences.
The use of torture physically destroys people. Torture methods, such as sham executions, rape, sexual assaults, humiliation and sleep deprivation often leave physical consequences on affected persons such as chronic pain in certain parts of body and inability to lead a healthy and prolonged lifestyle.
For this reason, people who had been affected by torture should have access to redress such as medical care, reintegration into society, rehabilitation and counseling. When states and governments use torture to achieve their goals, they often see it as necessary to provide some type of justification for its implementation. Governments and politicians must find ways to excuse and explain the use of torture, while those who publicly advocate for it must find arguments that would justify torture as a practice that is globally and universally regarded as immoral and condemned.
The prohibition of torture is enshrined in many conventions and declarations within the international human rights and humanitarian law. Similarly, it was established by the Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocols that serious violations of international humanitarian law, including torture and other inhuman treatment, constitute war crimes in both international and non-international armed conflicts.
As already mentioned, perhaps the most significant international law instrument used to combat torture is the Convention Against Torture, or the CAT.
Most of countries in the world have signed and ratified the CAT and other international human rights treaties and conventions. Inflicting torture on someone does not end without consequences. Both international and national law instruments oblige countries and governments to search for persons suspected to have committed torture acts and bring them before justice. Countries have a duty to enact legislation that prohibits acts of torture and other forms of ill-treatment and punish those who commit them and those who order them to be committed.
Individual perpetrators, thus, can be held criminally responsible for committing these crimes. According to the Article 4 of the CAT, all countries must ensure that all acts of torture are regarded as offences under their criminal law, including attempts to commit torture and any acts by any person that constitute participation or complicity of torture. States are obliged to punish these acts in an appropriate manner, as well as to establish jurisdiction over the acts of torture where the offences are committed in any territory under their jurisdiction, or where the alleged offender or the victim is a national of the country.
Additionally, countries are obliged to search for persons suspected to have committed acts of torture and make torture an extraditable offence in any extradition treaty they sign with other country. As already mentioned, torture methods are ineffective interrogation tool and evidence extracted from torture cannot be used as evidence.
Under Article 15 of the CAT, any statement made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceeding, unless it is used against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made. There is a common misconception that generally torture is linked solely to issues of counter-terrorism and national security due to high profile torture cases around the world. However, according to research conducted by the Amnesty International, torture can happen to anyone , including people from ethnic minorities, student activists, protesters, petty criminals, and to those people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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The State's obligations. Article 3 in action. This right is absolute. It is never justifiable to torture someone, whatever the circumstances. Inhuman or degrading treatment is also prohibited: Treatment is considered inhuman when it causes intense physical or mental suffering.
Treatment or punishment is degrading if it humiliates and debases a person beyond that which is usual from punishment. Torture evidence UK courts and tribunals may not rely upon evidence obtained through torture.
This applies regardless of which state carried out the torture or where it took place. Deportation or extradition Article 3 prevents the UK from deporting or extraditing people to another country where they would face a real risk of being tortured or subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.
Investigations Like the right to life under Article 2, Article 3 requires official, effective investigations into credible allegations of serious ill-treatment by public officials. Prevention Article 3 also requires authorities to take positive steps to prevent torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.
I'm looking for advice on this Did you know Liberty offers free human rights legal advice? Get advice. Supreme Court in also established a rule requiring the police who seek to question detainees to inform them of their "Miranda" rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present during the questioning [ Miranda v.
In explaining the need for this rule, the Court noted the continuing police practice of using physical force to extract confessions, citing, as an example, a case in which police beat, kicked and burned with lighted cigarette butts a potential witness under interrogation.
The Convention against Torture provides that any statement that has been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made. Q: Can limited physical force be used during interrogations? Force can never be used to pressure a detainee to speak, even if it seems only slight or moderate.
The absolute injunction against force has practical as well as moral underpinnings. Historical practice shows there is no such thing as a "little bit" of physical pressure to compel someone to speak during an interrogation.
Once a degree of force is permitted, interrogators face an overwhelming temptation to continue applying as much force as is necessary to acquire the sought-for information. While the forcible administration of so-called "truth serums"—drugs such as sodium pentothal, sodium amytal, and scopolamine —does not involve the infliction of severe pain, its use to secure information from a person would nonetheless be prohibited under international law. Human Rights Watch believes that at a minimum it would violate the person's right to be free from "inhuman or degrading" treatment.
We note that Article 2 of the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture expressly defines torture as including "the use of methods upon a person intended to obliterate the personality of the victim or to diminish his physical or mental capacities, even if they do not cause physical pain or mental anguish.
The prohibition against the ill-treatment of persons under interrogation is rooted in respect for human dignity and the inviolability of the human body and mind. To force a person to talk through the application of drugs is as much a denial of human dignity as to coerce talk through the use of physical force. Securing testimony through the involuntary administration of drugs would also violate the right against self-incrimination if it were not done under a grant of use immunity.
But even if such immunity were given—thus solving the problem of self-incrimination—drugging would still be prohibited because of its inhuman and degrading nature. Because of its profound compromise of the human personality, the use of drugs is quite different from the forcible taking of physical evidence—hair, blood, DNA, etc.
The administration of any of the drugs identified as having the potential for causing a person to talk is an involved medical procedure requiring delivery of the drug intravenously over a period that can range from two to twelve hours. The international Principles of Medical Ethics Relevant to the Role of Health Personnel provide that the participation of doctors or other medical practitioners in the administration of such drugs for interrogation purposes would violate medical ethics.
The use of truth serums is not an authorized method of interrogation in the United States. Under U. Sain , U. Investigators are not severely handicapped by not being able to use "truth serums.
Under the influence of such drugs, people may become highly suggestible, picking up cues from the interrogators and agreeing to information that is not true; they may relate fantasies; and they may still be able to deliberately mislead. According to a study by medical and legal experts:. On the other hand, some are able to withhold information and some, especially character neurotics, are able to lie.
Others are so suggestible they will describe, in response to suggestive questioning, behavior which never in fact occurred But drugs are not 'truth sera.
As another expert noted, "the intravenous injection of a drug by a physician in a hospital may appear more scientific than the drinking of large amounts of bourbon in a tavern, but the end result displayed in the subject's speech may be no more reliable. Q: Are there any situations in which torture is permitted? Under customary international law as well as underinternational human rights treaties, torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is prohibited at all times and in all circumstances.
It is a non-derogable right, one of those core rights that may never be suspended, even during times of war, when national security is threatened, or during other public emergencies. According to the U. The European Court of Human Rights has applied the prohibition against torture contained in European Convention on Human Rights in several cases involving alleged terrorists. As it noted in one case, "The Court is well aware of the immense difficulties faced by States in modern times in protecting their communities from terrorist violence.
However, even in these circumstances, the Convention prohibits in absolute terms torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, irrespective of the victim's conduct. United Kingdom , Nov. Similarly, the Committee against Torture, reviewing Israel's use of torture as a method of interrogation against suspected Palestinian terrorists, stated, "The Committee acknowledges the terrible dilemma that Israel confronts in dealing with terrorist threats to its security, but as a State party to the Convention Israel is precluded from raising before this Committee exceptional circumstances as justification for [prohibited] acts" [United Nations Committee against Torture.
Q: Shouldn't torture be permitted if its use will save lives? Some people argue that the goal of saving innocent lives must override a person's right not to be tortured. This argument is presented in its starkest form in the "ticking bomb" scenario: a bomb has been set to explode that will kill thousands of people and a detained person is known to have information on where the bomb is and how to defuse it.
Is torture justified in such a case to force the detainee to talk? Those who say that it is argue that governments should be permitted to choose torture as the lesser of two evils in such a situation. The international community, however, rejected the use of torture even in the "ticking bomb" case.
International human rights law - as well as U. There are practical as well as moral reasons for not permitting a "ticking bomb" -or terrorist attack -- exception to the ban on torture.
Although such an exception might appear to be highly limited, experience shows that the exception readily becomes the standard practice. For example, how imminent must the attack be to trigger the exception and justify torture - an hour, a week, a year? How certain must the government be that the detainee actually has the necessary information? Under the utilitarian logic that the end saving many innocent lives justifies the means, torture should be permitted even if the disaster might not occur until some point in the future, and it should be permitted against as many people as is necessary to secure the information that could be used to avert the disaster.
Israel provides a good example of how this logic works in practice. For years Israel justified its use of torture - what it called "moderate physical force" - by citing the "ticking bomb" scenario.
But despite a genuine security threat, Israeli security forces rarely if ever were able to identify a particular suspect with knowledge about a particular bomb set to explode imminently.
Rather, they ended up applying the scenario metaphorically to justify torturing virtually every Palestinian security detainee - thousands of people - on the theory that they might know something about some unspecified, future terrorist act. In , the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the use of torture, although the practice seems to have increased in the past year. In addition, the ticking bomb scenario offers no logical limitations on how much or what kind of torture would be permitted.
If the detainee does not talk when shaken or hit, why shouldn't the government move unto more severe measures, such as the application of electric shocks? Why not threaten to rape the suspect's wife or to torture his children? Once torture is allowed, setting limits is extraordinarily difficult. Q: Does the U. Torture is as likely to yield false information as it is to yield the truth.
Cesare Beccaria, the eighteenth century philosopher whose critique of torture remains influential today, observed that when a person is tortured, the "impression of pain…may increase to such a degree, that, occupying the mind entirely, it will compel the sufferer to use the shortest method of freeing himself from torment…[H]e will accuse himself of crimes of which he is innocent.
Contemporary law enforcement professionals concur. Oliver Ravel, former deputy director of the FBI, has stated that force is not effective: "people will even admit they killed their grandmother, just to stop the beatings.
The prohibition on torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading conduct does not leave the government helpless before terrorists. Convictions in recent cases involving terrorism show that investigators currently have the means and legal methods to acquire the evidence necessary for successful prosecutions. Q: May the U.
The United States may not send detainees to another country to be questioned by police or security forces who use torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment during their interrogation. Article 3 of the Convention against Torture expressly prohibits sending a person to another state "where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
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