Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014
Terrorist suspects, torture of
Section G. Crime and punishment
It is hard to know precisely how widespread torture by security services is, because it is typically kept secret, since it is a clear violation of international, European and (in most states) domestic law, which governments do not want to admit to. It is often referred to by euphemisms, of which ’enhanced interrogation’ has recently become the best known. Torture techniques vary; some countries are thought to use beatings or electric shocks to torture, but Western techniques tend to be more clinical; IRA suspects were often forced to stand in uncomfortable positions for hours on end, or subjected to light and noise torture, while the US military at Guantanamo Bay used ’water-boarding’, where suspects are wrapped in cling film and have water poured on them to simulate drowning. It is hard to know exactly how much information is obtained from torture, given that it is so secret. It is also hard to deal with the problem of complicity with torture, because many security services who practise it routinely are those with whom Western intelligence must co-operate (in the Middle East and South Asia); in consequence, even when they do not know about it directly, the CIA and MI6 will often be working from information obtained via torture.
Pros
[1] Sometimes torture is necessary to save lives. Where a terrorist possesses information that might lead to the prevention of imminent terrorist attacks, it is legitimate to violate their rights to ensure the protection of many others’ lives. This argument has two components. First, while torture is undeniably a serious invasion of someone’s bodily autonomy, that is less bad than death; thus, if just one life can be saved as a result, we should use torture. Second, because terrorist acts often have high death tolls, many lives may be saved by torturing just one person. As such, balancing the competing interests involved favours torture.
[2] While torture is typically used on those who have not yet been convicted, that should not be a bar to using it. First, it will rarely be the case that someone who is totally innocent is tortured; they are only being detained in the first instance because security services have some reasonable suspicion of their guilt. Moreover, if the occasional innocent person is tortured, that is an acceptable cost of the need to protect the public.
[3] The ’ticking bomb’ scenario is perhaps the best illustration of why torture will sometimes be morally acceptable. Suppose we knew that a bomb was located somewhere, but were not sure where that was, and further knew that a particular terrorist in our custody did possess that information, but was unwilling to give it to us. In that scenario, not torturing is to choose the deaths of a large number of innocent civilians, when they are clearly preventable. This highlights the fact that, while some might oppose torture on the grounds that there are alternative ways of gathering information, sometimes, in the short run, torture will be necessary.
[4] Terrorists tend to be highly ideological, with a belief in the correctness of their cause drilled into them. Often this is because they are religious, and so they believe that Heaven awaits them if they successfully fulfil their terrorist objectives. Such people are highly unlikely to ever give information unless they are coerced, so torture is necessary to acquire any real information from terrorist cells. Moreover, it is rarely possible to acquire such information via other routes; terrorists tend not to leave paper trails, or even make many phone calls that could be intercepted, and are located in complex networks all around the world. So when a terrorist is in our custody, it is vital that we act accordingly to get this information.
[5] Torture can help reduce radicalisation. If torture can be used in a targeted way, this reduces the need for blanket, more invasive measures like racial profiling, stop-and- search, phone tapping, etc., which are far more likely to alienate minority communities, as they actually touch the everyday lives of far more people.
Cons
[1] The right not to be tortured is not the kind of right that can be overridden for mere utilitarian considerations. The invasion of rights is so serious that it is not the kind of thing that civilised societies should ever be complicit in. In particular, the deliberate infliction of pain on fellow human beings is something we should treat with great caution, especially when it involves such cruel and dehumanising practices.
[2] Torture involves punishing those who have not been found guilty of the offence on which information is being sought. This is an unacceptable curtailment of due process, especially as it creates a very real risk that innocent people will be subjected to the cruellest punishments available to us, when they have done nothing wrong.
[3] In fact, there is no known example of a real ’ticking bomb’ scenario ever occurring; rather, this commonly made argument for torture rests on an imaginary and distant set of facts coming about, which in practice rarely would, if ever. Rather, torture becomes a crutch for security services, who do not look to alternative ways of obtaining the information, and so it becomes far more widespread than it needs to be.
[4] Rather than producing large amounts of information, torture is necessarily highly limited for two reasons. First, terrorists can give false information, which may in fact lead us down the wrong path in the short term; such false ’leads’ can in fact damage anti-terrorist measures overall. Second, they may well not possess the information being sought, and so will say anything to get out of the situation. Again, this leads to incorrect information.
[5] Torture runs the risk of radicalising large groups of people to further acts of terrorism. Evidence from Israel, for instance, shows that the families of victims of torture by the Israeli Defense Forces are much more likely to become terrorists themselves; having witnessed people close to them being harmed, they are understandably angry, and more likely to turn to violence. Moreover, torture serves as a recruitment tool for terrorist groups by advertising that the claims of Western liberal democracies to be more ’civilised’ and respectful of human rights are, in fact, far from true.
Possible motions
This House believes that torture is a necessary evil.
This House would use torture in the war on terror.
This House would never allow evidence obtained by torture to be used in court.
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