Sunday, October 24, 2004

There is no case for torture, ever

Quotes:
English judges have accepted that confessions beaten out of suspects can be used for the first time since the 1630s. The only reaction, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, could manage to their extraordinary decision was the Peck sniffian bleat that he had the 'awful feeling' that learning to live with torture 'is probably the right conclusion.' As with so many other descents into barbarism, the judges and ministers make each step on the downward path appear eminently reasonable.... It suggests that people are being held indefinitely in British jails because a naked man beset by dogs named him to placate his tormentors... What is dispiriting about the degeneracy of the Government and the Court of Appeal is that the old lessons have to be learned once again. The reasons why first England and then the civilised world rejected torture were practical as well as moral. Most people break under torture. Most people say whatever they have to say to stop the pain. When names are suggested to them, they agree. If the torturer wants to implicate the innocent or invent imaginary plots, he usually gets what he wants from his victim... If they give me a law officer, the Lord Chancellor perhaps, or the Director of Public Prosecutions, and a couple of heavies, and leave us alone in a locked room, I think I can guarantee that within a week he will have revealed that the entire senior judiciary are members of al-Qaeda.

16th century documents from Languedoc show that then only 10% of the people who were tortured by the law courts gave evidence that the torturers themselves believed to be valid.

With the use of torture one can prove whatever they want to prove.

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