INTERROGATION, TORTURE TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES

This Section discusses the use of science and technology to devise new efficient mark-free interrogation and torture technologies and their proliferation from the US & Europe. Of particular concern is the use and abuse of electroshock devices and their proliferation. It is recommended that the commercial sale of both training in counter terror operations and any equipment which might be used in torture and execution, should be controlled by the criteria and measures outlined in the next Section.

7. INTERROGATION, TORTURE TECHNIQUES & TECHNOLOGIES

Millennia of research and development have been expended in devising ever more cruel and inhumane means of extracting obedience and information from reluctant victims or achieving excruciatingly painful and long-drawn-out deaths for those who would question or challenge the prevalent status quo. What has changed in more recent times is (i) the increasing requirement for speed in breaking down prisoners' resistance; (ii) the adoption of sophisticated methods based on a scientific approach and (iii) a need for invisible torture which leaves no or few marks which might be used by organisations like Amnesty International to label a particular government, a torturing state.¹⁰³ According to Amnesty, there is also an increasing trend for torture and ill treatment to directed at common criminal suspects and social 'underdogs' such as immigrants and members of racial minorities (Forrest, 1996). Today, the phenomena of torture has grown to a worldwide epidemic. A report by the Redress Trust in 1995, found that 151 countries were involved in torture, inhuman or degrading treatment (Fig. 38), despite the fact that 106 states have ratified, acceded to or signed the Convention Against Torture.¹⁰⁴

The advent of modern torture technique can be traced back to the Russian NKVD, which used sensory deprivation and multiple levels of brutality to induce stress before 'conveyor'style questioning by relays of interrogators for days on end, thereby industrialising state terror. These approaches had the dual requirement of extracting information and breaking down personality in order to elicit public confessions as the era of the 'show trial' opened up.¹⁰⁵ There is a continuum between such coerced confessions and torture.¹⁰⁶

These techniques can themselves be regarded as part of an evolving technology which can be further researched and developed before being transferred elsewhere. Again, like all the technology of political control, torture technology has three components, hardware, software and liveware (the human elements), which are all woven together to form manipulative programmes of socio-political control. The hardware can include both modern and medieval prisoner restraining, disabling and repressive technologies, for example leg shackles, thumbcuffs, and suspension equipment, which despite being prohibited by Rule 33 of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules For the Treatment of Prisoners(United Nations, 1955),¹⁰⁷ are still being manufactured(Fig. 39 & Fig. 40);¹⁰⁸ it also encompasses blunt trauma-inducing drugs (e.g. Aminazin, apomorphine, curare, suxamethonium, haloperidol, insulin, sulfazin, triftazin, tizertsin, sanapax, etaperazin, phrenolong, trisedil, mazjeptil, seduksin and motiden-depo (Plate and Darvi, 1981). After World War II, the USA, for example, undertook considerable research on the use of drugs for obtaining intelligence from interrogees independent from their volition, for example, project Chatter.¹⁰⁹ This research was expanded during the Korean War and included laboratory experiments on animals and humans using Anabasis aphylla, scoplamin and mescaline in order to determine their speech inducing qualities. Overseas experiments were conducted as part of the project."¹¹⁰ The CIA later expanded this work in what became known as Projects Bluebird and Artichoke. A whole series of projects were then initiated under Projects MKDELTA and MKULTRA which were concerned with "the research and development of chemical, biological and radiological materials capable for employment in clandestine operations to control human behaviour."¹¹¹ Much of the CIA work on behaviour modification was later adapted towards less-lethal disabling chemicals.¹¹² More recently, Spain has been accused of using vagrants to test the use of anaesthetic drugs to make it easier for the security forces to kidnap guerillas of the Basque separatist organisation ETA.¹¹³

7.1 Torture Hardware

Other torture hardware includes electroshock weapons, electrically heated hot tables, whips, iron-chain filled rubber hoses, cat-o'-nine-tails, clubs, canes, specially designed torture devices and interrogation rooms using white noise (Fig. 41) (Sweeney 1991a and 1991b) and stroboscopic UV light (New Scientist, 1973). Much of this equipment is home made but some of the newer technologies are purpose built and may be used by successive law enforcement agencies after one torturing regime is replaced by another. For example, the 'Apollo machine' which was devised by SAVAK, the Shah's secret police in Iran (it delivered an electric shock to sensitive parts of the body, while a steel helmet covered prisoners' heads to amplify their screams), was also used by the succeeding regime's religious police. (Mather,1982)

Helen Bamber, Director of the British Medical Foundation for the Treatment of the Victims of Torture, has described electroshock batons at 'the most universal modern tool of the torturers'. (Gregory, 1995) Recent surveys of torture victims have confirmed that after systematic beating, electroshock is one of the most common factors (London, 1993); (Rasmussen, 1990). If one looks at the country reports of Amnesty International, electroshock torture is the Esperanto of the most repressive states. Many examples of its use have been reported including Austria,¹¹⁴ Greece (Council of Europe, 1994); China (Amnesty International 1992b), Ballantyne, 1992, 1995); and Saudi Arabia (Amnesty International, 1994). Amnesty International has just published a survey of fifty countries where electric shock torture and ill treatment has been recorded since 1990.¹¹⁵

According to the manufacturers, the new pulsed variants of electroshock weapon were developed in the 1980's on the basis of biomedical research. They come in several variants including hand held prods and batons, (Fig. 42) electrified riot shields (Fig. 43) and electrified dart systems like the Taser (Fig. 44.). Electroshock weapons work on the induction coil principle. They are battery powered devices which step up the voltage several thousand fold to produce a high voltage low amperage shock that affects the victim's muscle control. As well as severe pain and a temporary paralysis, such weapons also achieve a psychological effect because of the dancing display of crackling blue lightning which traverses the electrodes of both shields and prods.

An independent survey by the UK Forensic Science Service (FSS) (commissioned by the British Home Office), examined the possible hazardous effects of a range of different electroshock devices on the human body (Robinson, et al., 1990). The FSS study reported that receiving a typical discharge from an electroshock prod up to half a second startles and repels the victim; one to two seconds and the victim loses the ability to stand up; three to five seconds and loss of skeletal muscle control is total and immobilization occurs. The effect can last for between five and fifteen minutes. The FSS study also reported that modern pulsed electroshock weapons are more powerful than the old fashioned cattle prods by nearly two orders of magnitude.

Portable electrified riot shields have been manufactured since the mid-1980's for prisoner capture and control. They comprise a transparent polycarbonate plate through which metal strips are interlaced. A button activated induction coil in the handle sends 40,000 - 100,000 volts arcing across the metal strips, accompanied by intermittent indigo flashing sparks and an intimidating crackle as the air between the electrodes is ionized. They work by charging up and then instantly discharging a capacitor, to produce a chain of high impulse shocks. A sales video shows how the victim can be instantaneously thrown to the ground on impact, completely incapacitated.

Manufacturers' claims that these products are "safe" are open to interpretation. Deaths have been reported from both Tasers¹¹⁶ and from shock shields.¹¹⁷ One of the key experts used by manufacturers of electroshock weapons to justify claims of the generic safety of these devices has refuted such an interpretation.¹¹⁸ There is also the need to take into account the political context in which many of these weapons are used since push button torture may be just one methodology applied as part of an entire spectrum of abuse.

7.2 Torture Software

Apart from such hardware, there are also numerous standard operating procedures which form the 'software' component of torture. Examples of training supplied to authoritarian regimes include the low intensity conflict training used to capture, stress and 'soften up' dissidents (Watson 1980), advisory support and technical assistance, including teaching of scientific methods of 'deep interrogation' procedures and the more brutal forms of human destruction.

Research and development in modern torture techniques and technologies has focused upon methods which cause suffering and intimidation without leaving much in the way of embarrassing long-term visible evidence of brutality. However, researchers in torture rehabilitation are gradually evolving more sophisticated methods for detecting and verifying the use of torture (Karlsmark, et al., 1988; Rasmussen and Skylv, 1993).

A vast range of torture techniques have been evolved.¹¹⁹ The names of these techniques signify how systematized this behaviour has become. Some torturing states evolve their own lexicon of systematized abuse. For example, in China there are dian ji (electrical assault), gui bian (down on knees whipping), jieju (chains and fetters), shouzhikao (finger cuffs), zhiliaio (rod fetters), menbanliao (shackleboard) (Figs. 39, 40, & 45.) and so on, (Human Rights Watch, 1992; Amnesty International, 1992b).¹²⁰ A similar set of routinized torture techniques emerged in Latin America in the 1970's. (Figs. 46, 47 & 48).

The flow of modern repressive 'technique' includes expertise in courses on low intensity conflict management in operations deemed to be 'counter terror' or operations other than war. Some of these approaches are formally coded.¹²¹ In January 1997, for example, a CIA 'Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual' was released in response to a FOIA request and detailed torture methods against suspected subversives during the 1980's refuting claims by the agency that no such methods were taught there.¹²²

Intense interrogation methodologies border on torture, particularly when they incorporate scientific approaches based on psycho-pharmacology or sensory deprivation, or involve levels of physical terror and softening-up processes of intimidation which sap the will of the prisoner to resist. What has evolved from this quest for ever more powerful techniques to break the human spirit is a classical form of operant conditioning designed to teach the target psyche debilitation, dependence and dread (Biderman & Zimmer, 1965). (See Chart 10). Just occasionally, hard evidence of such research comes to light (Anon, 1993). In the case of Northern Ireland, BSSRS member Tim Shallice was probably the first to identify a scientific methodology at work in the pre-interrogation treatments (See Chart 11) used on detainees in the first wave of internment introduced into Northern Ireland in 1971. Shallice identified the real nature of the special treatment dished out to a selected few - associating it with sensory deprivation techniques (Shallice, 1973) (See Chart 12), and an experiment where those targeted were "guinea pigs" according to McGuffin (1974).

In Northern Ireland, the findings of pioneer sensory isolation pioneers such as Hebb, 1958; Smith & Lensky, 1959, Lilly, 1955 and Zubek and Solomon, et al. 1959, were modified by the British Army to create a new process of coercive and debilitating torture which left no marks.¹²³ Hebb found that after leaving such experiments, volunteers were disorientated and very suggestible to propaganda. We can conclude that in the far more disturbing conditions of arrest, the anxiety created by these techniques would confuse the victims' thought processes so much that they would fall easy prey to the bad man-good man act. The works of Lilly, Smith and Lensky showed that among the after-effects of sensory deprivation experiences were loss of identification, feelings of unreality and disorientation. Fear and panic were found to be common in anyone remaining in an environment of perceptual deprivation for more than two hours. As was apparent from the psychological research, anything over 24 hours 'at the wall' would be sufficient to induce psychotic breakdown. It has now been established that the long term effects of such experiences are traumatic neuroses comparable to shell shock or in modern parlance, it rapidly induced post traumatic stress syndrome.¹²⁴

We know that such approaches are designed to intimidate the wider population rather than just to extract specific information from any one individual; they are heuristic and can be taught to others (See McHardy, 1976 and the Times, 1980). The parallels of the British techniques with those of the CIA Human Resource Training Manual discussed above are striking. The CIA manual discusses using intense fear, deep exhaustion, solitary confinement, unbearable anxiety, standing to attention for long periods of time, sleep and food deprivation, stripping suspects naked and keeping them blindfolded in windowless, dark interrogation rooms with no toilet. Only in January of 1997, did the CIA formally renounce and prohibit its agents from using these torture manuals.¹²⁵ In the meantime, variants of this methodology have appeared elsewhere, e.g., by the Palestinian Authority which was set up in May 1994.¹²⁶

Some interrogation techniques are intended to kill. For example the use of a heavy wooden roller to crush the limbs of detainees in Kashmir. This practice results in the release of myoglobin, heme and other related muscle proteins and toxins (Rhabdomyolysis) which leads to acute renal failure. In the absence of kidney dialysis, the results are fatal.¹²⁷ Other regimes have resorted to delayed poisoning of their dissidents who die after their release from incarceration, e.g. by the use of Thallium which was deployed against Kurds in Iraq and most recently (according to the ongoing Truth Commission), by South Africa's Apartheid regime.¹²⁸  

7.3 Torture Liveware

In any bureaucracy of repression, there are personnel schooled in the ideological attitudes necessary to keep such systems in operation (Fig.49). In some cases this schooling takes place literally, for example at the infamous School of the Americas based at Fort Benning in Georgia, otherwise known at the 'School of the Assassins' or 'La escuela del golpe' (the coup school). It has been accused of training death squads in Guatemala and Honduras, e.g. Battalion 3-16 (Walker, 1994). In 1995, the Baltimore Sun obtained Freedom Of Information Act documents on Battalion 3-16, (which used electroshock and rubber suffocation devices on prisoners in Honduras), that confirmed that the Unit had been trained in interrogation techniques by the CIA (Baltimore Sun, 11 June 1995). Last year, further manuals were released under FOIA on Project X, part of the US Foreign Intelligence Assistance Programme which reveal that until the 1980's, the US military ran an intelligence training programme in Latin America and elsewhere, that taught foreign officers to offer bounties for captured or killed insurgents, spy on non-violent political opponents, kidnap rebels' family members, blackmail unwanted informants and the use of drugs to facilitate interrogation. Project X manuals were distributed by the US Army School of Americas but their use was stopped only in 1991 when the Defense Intelligence Agency raised ethical and legal questions.¹²⁹

Thus the creation of a bureaucracy practising systematic human rights violation will often include external 'liveware', e.g., the various foreign technical advisers, counter-insurgency and low intensity conflict strategists, paramilitary, intelligence and internal security police as well as the 'white collar mercenaries' who act as key technical operators in any administrative policy of repression. This 'liveware' category includes all the people who are conditioned by fear or training to actually put into practice the software and hardware components of a particular policy of repression.¹³⁰ For the last decade, he export of such 'security' training has become a highly profitable commercial proposition (Gordon, 1987) and it is a characteristic of the trade in torture technology and expertise that it has become so intensely privatised (Klare and Arnson, 1981). Such technologies are now entering Europe from the USA.

7.4 International Controls On The Export Of electroshock & Stun Technology

In theory, a substantial body of international human rights obligations should effectively prevent such transfers, including: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights; Article 5 of the American Convention on Human Rights; Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental freedoms; UN Convention Against Torture; the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Standard Minimum Rules For the Treatment of Prisoners. Yet in January 1995, it was possible for a UK investigative reporter working for UK Channel 4 Dispatches, to obtain the enthusiastic willingness of several British companies to supply such devices, which are in fact banned under UK law (Gregory 1995).

7.5 The European Torture Trail

Until the Channel 4 Programme, 'The Torture Trail' was shown, it was not widely realized that such an extensive European electroshock manufacturing and supply base existed. Undercover TV actors were given privileged access to a secret network of companies making electroshock weapons and to come away with orders worth over £3 million (consisting of 10,000 electroshock shields and 5000 shock batons from British Aerospace (BAe) and 15,000 electroshock units from ICL Technical Plastics). But perhaps the insights this programme gave into the procurement and proliferation of electro-control technology is even more astonishing. Philip Morris, the Sales Manager for Royal Ordnance, agreed to use the Royal Ordnance's worldwide procurement network to bring the electroshock deal together, irrespective of the equipment's country of origin or its eventual destination; Ordnance would organise the whole package. Royal Ordnance's parent company, invited their clients to meet up at the secretive
51

Covert Operation & Procurement Exhibition (COPEX), held at Sandown Park racecourse In November 1994. A wide range of internal security was on display. Foreign invitees included delegations from China, Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

The Dispatches team followed through that rendezvous with a meeting at the Royal Ordnances own offices in Lancashire, where they were shown a 40,000-volt shock baton made in Eire, together with an electronic riot shield made in Tennessee, USA, by Nova Technologies, which could immobilise 120 people without a battery change. While the deal was struck, Royal Ordnance made an extraordinary confession, that they had sold 8000 german electroshock batons as part of the Al Yamamah deal to Saudi Arabia.¹³¹

A further insight into the complicity of companies involved in this business was afforded by the programme's interview with the manager of ICL Technical Plastics in Glasgow, Frank Stott.¹³² He claimed that he used to sell shock batons to the apartheid regime in South Africa, and to Abu Dhabi for the Gulf States; and a year after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he sold electric-shock weapons to the Chinese authorities via Hong, with the UK government's blessing, and said that the trip was supported by the Department of Trade & Industry. Mr. Stott claimed that the Chinese had an ulterior motive for buying his electroshock weapons: they wanted to copy them. (China has a prodigious electroshock weapon manufacturing industry (for example, the Tianjin Bohai Radio Works manufactures 80,000 shock instruments a year - all quality controlled (Fig. 50). It is instructive to note that one of the products photographed in China for this programme, an extending electroshock probe (See Fig. 51), has been awarded a British patent (no. GB214906A).¹³³

7.6 RECOMMENDATIONS

(i). New regulations on the nature of in-depth interrogation training should be agreed which prohibit export of such techniques to forces overseas known to be involved in gross human rights violation.

(ii). All training of foreign military, police, security and intelligence forces in interrogation techniques, should be subject to licence, even if it is provided outside European territory .

(iii). Restrictions on visits to European MSP related events by representatives of known torturing states should be effectively implemented.

(iv) The Commission should be requested to achieve agreement between member States to:

(a) immediately prohibit the transfer of all electroshock stun weapons to any country where such weapons are likely to contribute to unlawful killings, or to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, for example by refusing any export licence where it is proposed that electroshock weapons will be transferred to a country where persistent torture or instances of instances of electric shock torture and ill treatment have been reported;

b) introduce and implement new regulations on the manufacture, sale and transfer of all electroshock weapons from and into Europe, with a full report to the European Parliament's Civil Liberties committee made each year. [Special consideration should be given to controlling the whole procurement process, covering even the making of contracts of sale, (to prevent a purchase deal made in a European country being met by a supplier or subsidiary outside of the EU, in an effort to obviate extant controls)].

52

(c). Ensure that the proposed regulations should cover patents and prohibit the patenting of any device whose sole use would be the violation of human rights, via torture or the creation of unnecessary suffering. The onus should be on the patent seeker to show that his patent would not lead to such outcomes.

(v) The European Parliament should look at commissioning new work to investigate how existing legislation within member states of the EU, can be brought to bear to prosecute companies who have been complicity in the supply of equipment used for torture as defined by the UN convention of torture. This new work should examine, in conjunction with the Directorate of Human Rights:

(a) The extent to which such technology produced by European companies is being transferred to human rights violators and the role played by international military, police and security fairs organised both inside and outside European Borders;

(b) The possible measures that could be set in place to monitor and track any technology transfer within this category and any potential role in this endeavour that might be played by recognised Non-Governmental Organisations.

Idaho Web Design Tools