TORTURE 101: LESSONS FROM THE BRAZILIAN CASE1

INTRODUCTION

In Spring 2002 I submitted an editorial to the Albany Times Union, "Treat prisoners like human beings,"2 warning that prisoner conditions at Guantanamo allowed interrogations there to become torture. This model was based not on an image of the kinds of people likely to torture, but on the political, social, and cultural facilitating conditions that promote, encourage, and excuse it. After thirty years of sociological research on state violence, including extensive interviews with Brazilian police torturers, I felt confident about the ability of my "Torture 101" model to predict such violence in prisons, jails, and interrogation safe houses.

In April 2004 I submitted Oped pieces to U.S. newspapers on prisoner mistreatment in Afghanistan and Iraq. Coming just before the pictures of the Abu Ghraib abuse, newspaper editors found my arguments lacked "sufficient data." I had asserted that prisoner torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo could be predicted from decades of research on obedience to authority, on prisoner treatment in pre-World War II Japan, in Nazi Germany, and in Brazil and other Latin American countries.

CONDITIONS THAT ESTABLISHED FOUNDATION FOR SYSTEMATIC STATE-SANCTIONED TORTURE

There are ten conditions in the U.S. "war against terror"-particularly in U.S.- occupied Middle Eastern war zones and at Guantánamo-that laid a foundation for systemic state-sanctioned torture. The eventual U.S. Congressional and military investigations into Abu Ghraib prison torture, like much previous academic research on torture systems, lent support to my contention that torture systems are characterized by the following elements that promote, hide, and justify torture:

1. The word "torture" is mislabeled or avoided by perpetrators and responsible officials. The Brazilian torturers I interviewed in 1993 seldom used the word torture, referring to it as "that type of conduct," "a conversation with our prisoners," or "conducting research . . . and looking for data." They would admit to having carried out such "lesser excesses" as "slapping . . . and punching [a prisoner] around a little" or "hanging [a prisoner] up there." When torture had gone "too far," the torturer pointed to his having "committed] a mistake" or engaged in "unnecessary excesses."3

Similarly, investigations of U.S. "abuse" of imprisoned Iraqis have disclosed a reluctance to use the "T" word, with various levels of actors describing this violence as: "degradation," "staging," "mistreatment," "tough interrogation." Presumably, these "lesser" forms of violence-besides supposedly falling well short of torture--can be neatly frozen in time and do not devolve into torture. In fact, however, inside a prison and its interrogation chambers, especially during the preliminary "softening up" interrogation sessions--where, at Abu Ghraib, physical or psychological mistreatment were part of the interrogation process--the "lesser" forms of violence quickly turn into more serious forms, including torture and killing.4 Violent interactions are not static; violence produces more and usually more serious forms of violence.5

2. Ideologies of "national security" abound. Torture is nurtured and justified by ideologies that create an ever-expanding category of "enemy others." Where "good" nations are threatened by "evil-doers," and anyone could be an "enemy," there can be no restrictions on interrogation. Fear, whether or not deliberately instilled-as in fictions about "weapons of mass destruction"-grants legitimacy to torture. Where a "threat" is said to operate outside civilized law, a state's response can legitimately follow suit.

3. Ad-hoc legalism. A torture-enabling culture is fostered and excused by official executive-level decisions that make torture seem legitimate. In 2002, the Bush administration simply declared that Guantánamo detainees were not covered by the U.S. Constitution or by international law. Under pressure from the State Department, this ruling was revised to apply only to Guantánamo's "illegal combatants," a status simply assigned to such detainees by the Bush administration rather than by "military tribunals," as required by the Geneva Convention.

Attempting in Spring 2004 to clarify the Bush administration's position on Iraqi prisoners, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained before the Senate Armed Services Committee that, at the Abu Ghraib prison, the Geneva Conventions apply to the incarcerated "in one way or another." The Conventions apply directly to "the Prisoners of War, [but] the criminals...are handled under a different provision of the Geneva Convention."6 Rumsfeld failed to identify the legal status of "battlefield detainees," unless these are the "criminals" to whom the Defense Secretary referred.

The Bush Administration claims to accept application of the Geneva Accords and the UN Convention Against Torture--except when it does not, an illustration of what some legal scholars call "international law a la carte." Such a flexible legal standard makes prisoners vulnerable to torture, especially when the definition of torture itself shifts according to international, national, and local political pressures.