Here is a hypothetical question. You are the head of a counter-terrorist force in Bombay. It is 26/11. Terrorists are spreading havoc in the city. You don’t know how many of them there are or what they are planning. But thanks to the sacrifices of a few brave policemen, Ajmal Kasab arrives in your custody.
You ask him where his fellow terrorists are and what they have planned. He laughs in your face.
What do you now do? These are your options:
a) You advise him of his rights and let him phone his lawyer.
b) You settle down for a sustained interrogation knowing that eventually he will slip up and reveal something.
c) You pull out his fingernails till he tells you exactly how many terrorists there are, what locations have been targeted and where their orders are coming from.
I would imagine that the majority of Indians would go for (c). It’s not that we are animals or that we enjoy torturing people, but at times like these, the priority is to save lives, not to worry about the rights of a terrorist.
My guess is that in a similar situation, most Americans would also agree. The premise of the popular TV series 24 is that torture is allowed when time is short and there are lives to be saved.
But now, Americans are asking questions about the way their government is using torture. Even 24 has had to acknowledge this debate. The last season opened with its hero Jack Bauer appearing before a Senate committee investigating his use of torture.
This week, reality followed TV. On Monday, President Barack Obama appointed a Special Investigator to inquire into allegations of torture by CIA officers and counterterrorism officials. Torture has now been banned and officers who tortured suspects might face action.
We now know that Americans routinely use torture — former Vice-President Dick Cheney even brags about it. The really heavy stuff is outsourced to allied secret services but the US military and the CIA have routinely waterboarded (making suspects feel they are drowning) prisoners and used other coercive methods.
Threats have been routinely employed. According to official documents, the CIA told one detainee that his mother would be raped before his eyes. Another was threatened with the murder of his children.
New methods of torture — including one that causes hypothermia in suspects — have been devised specially for the so-called War on Terror.
Worse still, it’s not even clear that the Americans are very good at this. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, one of the 9/11 masterminds, was tortured repeatedly but all that the CIA got out of him was information about ancient plots that failed. Nevertheless, they waterboarded him 185 times! Many suspects brag that they lied to interrogators to get them to stop the torture.