The West must display the morality that we claim to be protecting

British authorities have, according to reports, ordered the detention of terrorism suspects by Security Service officers in Pakistan and then questioned them after a period of torture at the hands of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency.  If true, then this is indefensible.  At the very least we will have capitalised on torture, that is if we have not instigated it ourselves.  What kind of defence is “I didn’t shoot him, it was the gun what done the damage your honour.  I only pulled the trigger”?

 

From today’s Guardian:

“One man from Manchester says that in 2006 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and had three fingernails slowly extracted by ISI agents at the Rawalpindi centre before being interrogated by two MI5 officers… A second man, from Luton, Bedfordshire, alleges that two years earlier he was whipped, suspended by his wrists and beaten, and threatened with an electric drill, possibly at the same torture centre… No attempt was made to extradite either man to be questioned by police officers in the UK, and they received no assistance from British consular officials. They were eventually arrested on arrival in Britain after being placed aboard aircraft and flown in without extradition hearings.”

The matter will apparently be raised in the trial and appeal respectively of the two men, amongst others, on terrorism charges.  It will be interesting to see how the allegations are rebuffed, I would imagine that Government officials will either contest the allegations of torture or plead ignorance of it.  In either case, evidence of torture alone is enough to set aside any conviction.

In defence of these methods we will hear the great unanswerable argument “how many lives would have been lost without this information?”.  How long is a piece of string, indeed.  There is a possibility that lives were, are and will be saved as a result of this ‘outsourced torture’.  Equally, there is the possibility that none have been.  Indeed there is a reasonable case for suggesting that lives may have been lost chasing red herrings as a result.  Under such extremes of human suffering the detainees would- in all likelihood- say whatever their torturers wanted them to say in order to make them stop. 

But even if we cast aside these doubts and assume that torture does provide information which may help to close down terrorist operations in the short term, we still need to look at the longer term ramifications.  Is it really a good idea to provide more ammunition for those who preach hatred, in the battle to win the trust and support of the young Muslims who could become tomorrow’s terrorists or tomorrow’s mediators?  If we can win the youth of tomorrow, at home and then abroad, we can begin to put an end to the bloodshed.  If we forfeit them, then the bodycount can only continue to rise. 

The West must display the morality that we claim to be protecting.  By resorting to torture we are engaging the enemy on the terms of their choosing and it is a fight that we can never win.  We can and do prevent terrorism in other ways, this way comes with too high a price tag.

~ by theraffishdandy on 29 April, 2008.