"You can cause a lot of discomfort and some people will talk but interrogation is not about talking. It’s about the search for the truth."
October 21, 2012 10:05 PM Subscribe
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But the technique that all of us in Aden listened to agape was a method that had been developed allegedly very recently, which was to suspend the prisoner in a tank of liquid gelatine which was at 94.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Naked. With your arms and legs tied and your head encased in a sort of diver’s helmet, through which you were breathing. You were hung into this tank, so all you could hear was the [breathing noise] of your own breath. And in theory you would go bonkers. Because you didn’t know which way was up, you had no sense." -
Interview with British Interrogator #1"In the end the guy talks because he wants to...
...Mental damage is what the law and society tells us we can do. …You also have to note that there is a blurring between controlling prisoners and conditioning them." -
Interview with British Interrogator #2
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He is being handled by people who don’t speak their language, doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him, doesn’t know when he’s going to see his family again, doesn’t know when he’s going to get his next meal, or his next drink. All he knows is that he is in the hands of the enemy. That’s all he knows. And it is frankly a very upsetting experience. It really is. And that is shown in a thing called The Shock of Capture." -
Interview with British Army Interrogator #3
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Can you imagine killing these people for 2-3 days – you’d been told what to do about them – and you shot them, and you kept shooting them, and they kept coming! Eventually, it turned out, you gave up – to one of them, in my case." -
Interview with SAS NCO Trained Interrogator
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They were hooded. They were in a helicopter. The helicopter took off, then bounced about and came down to a couple of feet again, you know, so that the people were so disoriented that they didn’t know where they were. Then they threw them out as if they were throwing them out from a height." -
Interview with Senior Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer on interrogation
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I said ‘This shackling and hooding prisoners is inconsistent with the Geneva Conventions, Colonel, and isn’t that what we’re supposed to be abiding by. I haven’t heard anything else.’
That got an official response …the response was, and one that I accepted, that prisoners have responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions, too. ‘Two soldiers have been seriously wounded and one killed by prisoners after they have surrendered, so this is a security measure that is provided for in the conventions. For security purposes you can do this.’
I read the Conventions a little differently." -
Interview with US Army Interrogator #1
UK Journalist
Dominic Streatfeild interviews five interrogators from the UK armed forces and one from the US about their training, tactics and experiences - both as interrogators and as subjects.
Via.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 10:11 PM on October 21, 2012 [1 favorite]