Why Torture?: To Obtain a Confession

We just discussed torture as a (very unsatisfactory) method of punishment. Another reason to torture someone is to obtain a confession for criminal acts already committed, typically when existing evidence does not allow for a conviction. Shane O'Mara and Christopher J. Einolf both discuss the use of torture to achieve a confession, but Einolf explains it best:

“For medieval judges to find an accused party guilty, they needed to have either a confession or the testimony of two eyewitnesses to the crime. If there was much circumstantial evidence that indicated guilt, but no eyewitnesses or only one eyewitness, judges were not able to reach a finding of guilt if the accused party maintained his or her innocence. In these cases, judges would sometimes authorize torture to compel a confession” (107-108).

If the interrogator desires a confession, then torture is exceedingly effective at eliciting one. If the interrogator desires an accurate confession...other methods are more effective. Take for example the case of Mr. Saddam Saleh Aboud, who was detained in Iraq by the Iraqi police when he reported a car in downtown Baghdad that he believed was wired with a bomb, then turned over to the U.S. Army. Held at Abu Ghraib, Mr. Aboud was subjected to abuse:

“[H]e confessed to anything they asked. He admitted to belonging to the insurgency, of knowing top terrorists, of being Mr. bin Laden, of being a member of a militant Shiite Muslim group, even though he is a Sunni. He said he made up stories about where the resistance was hiding in the western desert” (Fisher).

The only saving grace of Mr. Aboud's story is that because he was turned over to the Americans, his "confessions" were not used against him to prosecute him. Amnesty International explains in their 2011 report:

“The Iraqi government’s riposte was to sweep up suspects, torture them to extract ‘confessions’, cart them before the courts and sentence scores to death after grossly unfair trials” (Amnesty International, 43).

Although the Torture Convention expressly prohibits the use of "evidence" gained under torture to convict an individual of crimes (Article 15), we have not yet achieved that goal.


Resources:

Amnesty International. Amnesty International Report 2011: The State of the World's Human Rights. London: Amnesty International, 2011.

Einolf, Christopher J. "The Fall and Rise of Torture: A Comparative and Historical Analysis." Sociological Theory, 25.2 (2007): 101-121.

Fisher, Ian. "THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: PRISONER; Iraqi Tells of U.S. Abuse, From Ridicule to RapeThreat." The New York Times, 14 May 2004.

O'Mara, Shane. "On the Imposition of Torture, an Extreme Stressor State, to Extract Information From Memory: A Baleful Consequence of Folk Cognitive Neurobiology." Journal of Psychology, 219.3 (2011): 159-166.