US Pointless to Redefine Torture: Study

Ill treatment during captivity, such as psychological manipulations, humiliating treatment, and forced stress positions, does not seem to be substantially different from physical torture in terms of the severity of mental suffering they cause," the study's authors wrote in the journal of the Archives of General Psychiatry, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Researchers who evaluated the mental health of soldiers and civilians tortured during the 1990s Balkan wars found that victims of psychological abuse were just as likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression as victims of classic physical torture methods.

They said their analysis of 279 Bosnian, Croatian and Serb torture survivors showed that the individuals who suffered psychological abuse had the same rates of depression, PTSD, and social and work-related problems as others who had endured beatings, burnings, sexual abuse and other forms of physical punishment at the hands of their captors.

They suggested that the trauma is the same, because regardless of the form of aggression, the effect is to create fear or anxiety in the detainee while at the same time removing any form of control from the person in order to create a state of total helplessness.

"Thus, these procedures (psychological torture) do amount to (physical) torture, thereby lending support to their prohibition by international law," the study added.

The study was written by Metin Basoglu, head of trauma studies at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, with help from colleagues at the department of psychiatry at the Clinical Hospital Zvezdara in Belgrade.

US Distinction

The authors of the study said that based on their analysis of the experiences of torture victims from the modern Balkans conflict, the US appears to be drawing a distinction without a difference.

"The distinction between torture and degrading treatment is not only useless, but also dangerous," said Steven Miles, professor of bioethics at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in an accompanying editorial in the journal of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The investigators said their findings undermine moves by the US government to narrow its definition of torture in order to free interrogators to use certain psychological methods aimed at breaking a prisoner's resistance.

In 2003, lawyers for the US Justice Department and a Pentagon working group report on detainee interrogations made the case for a narrow definition of torture that excludes procedures such as blindfolding and hooding, forced nudity, isolation and other psychological manipulations.

The Justice Department memorandum argued that the scope of the term torture should be limited to those acts which could be shown to result in "prolonged mental harm," according to the study.

The study followed allegations of human rights abuses at US detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The trial of terror suspect José Padilla in a US court on suspected terror charges has turned the spotlight on the "psychological torture" practiced by American jailers, who are accused of driving terror suspects insane to the extent that they see their interrogators and torturers as a father-figure.

Padilla himself has claimed he was subjected to sleep deprivation, extreme heat and cold, threats of execution, exposure to noxious fumes, and was forced to wear a hood and stand in one position for extended periods of time.

Whenever Padilla left the cell, he was shackled and suited in heavy goggles and headphones.

Human rights activists said the techniques used to break Padilla have been standard operating procedure at Guantanamo Bay, the notorious US detention camp in Cuba in which the US is holding hundreds of terror suspects without charge and incommunicado.

Electrocuted, sexually abused and put in a tiny cell flooded with water and human waste are a few but to mention examples of the horrors faced by Iraqi detainees at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison as reported by the American media.

Several US dailies revealed that former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former top US commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, gave free reign to US officers in charge of Abu Ghraib to adopt various torture and abuse tactics used at Guantanamo.

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