The justification the Euro Court used for decision is farcical. techniques employed, they said, caused intense physical and mental suffering and.. acute psychiatric disturbance during interrogation"
INTENSITY Yet they did not occasion suffering of the particular the word torture'.
Bur if your anxiety is made to spiral to a level where you are -temporarily insane, where you hallucinate and hose all sense of space and time, it is difficult to see how things could get worse. And' this is what did happen in the considered Strasbourg. unique to British judges. Two weeks ago, the European the methods The British Judge, Sur Gerald their Fitzmaurice, argued that the The methods were not torture because if they were how "does olle characterise. baving onc's finger nails torn out.
Slowly impaled on a through the rectum, or roasted over an clectric grid?"
The answer is easy. Such methods are old-fashioned, unscientific and much too obvious. The first requirement for torture in that it can be easily represented TORTURE Il Sir Gerald reads Times, he will no doubr agree at with Bernard Levin's denunciation of Russia's uses of Build the International Tribunal! That was the main message of the speeches at the rally held last Sunday to commemorate the deaths of the 14 demonstrators MAKE LAL HEHELLAR EDITO mental tortures in Russia to ones commulled ov the Brisi being Others TLIC LILL Sunday Times verdict. Perhaps the editor had forgotton that on 21 November, 1971, his paper had carried an article by Anthony Store entitled Why Hooding is Mental Torture'.
The response of the judiciary and media was a triumph for the British Government's policy of cover-up and delay. Ever since the news tirst began to percolate The our in the autumn of MORSE adopted a policy of agreeing to virtually anything disturbing implications'. They Britain in of court to effort was put into But he seems unable to share his EVIDENCE For example the offered no on the Strasbour said in November, leading psychiatrist emergencies in years' 1971. governments have ample providing no more information came out, and they didn't have totake action against anyone on When sued by victims, the Government decided to settle the tune of order to avoid publicity. At Strasbourg they spun things out for four years without allowing any testimony on the important issues. Mast blandly Denys ou me Balsa can was responsible for torture arguing: The State can only be responsible if it could be shown ing the torture techniques) had been tolerated at the level of the The evidence exists. Lord Balniel, Secretary for Defence, 1971: *Ministers were aware of the principles underlying interro gation in depth...The proced ures have been used in the course of five separate campaigns or the last ten A Minister admits that with full ministerial knowledge the British Army had been engaged in torture for a ten-year period Sothe 14 Irish cases must be the tip of the iceberg. Seven years is LOE TESTICS HOW ARE WE DOING? exposures by the British media Yet with the exception of the New Sclentist, for whom the functions of the techniques s more obvious, there has been a GENEVA deafening silence. The British Goverminent need have Do tear of Watergates. The ruling class the legal system, and the mas mediaaretoo righrly integrated.
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decision that constitute torture. Responsibility in Science.
interrogating internees in Ireland in 1971 did not TIM SHALLICE, co-author of The Technology of -Political Control (Penguin), contests the Strasbourg judgement on behalf of the British Society for Social
killed in Derry by British Troops on Bloody Sunday, used by