Are we no longer disgusted or scandalized by torture? I have been surprised by how little protest or complaint there has been against the obvious and repellent savagery unleashed by Vladimir Putin’s State against the alleged perpetrators of the March 22 terrorist attack.
In this attack, at the Crocus City concert hall, near Moscow, at least 139 people were killed and 180 more were injured.
On Sunday night, the four suspected terrorists were paraded before television cameras in a Moscow courtroom. It was evident that they had been treated severely. One had a bandage roughly put over his ear, or where his ear had been. Another was in a wheelchair. It is possible that he was missing one of his eyes. He was dressed in a hospital gown, which was open to show a catheter.
It wasn’t difficult to understand why they looked that way. The film of them being tortured had somehow made its way onto “social media.”
The New York Times explained: ‘One of the most disturbing videos showed a defendant… having part of his ear cut off and stuffed into his mouth. A photograph circulating on the Internet showed a battery connected to another’s genitals… while he was detained.’
One of the suspected terrorists in the mass shooting at the Crocus City concert hall appeared on Russian television with a bandage over his ear.
Much worse details can be obtained for those who wish to know them. I advise not looking for them.
The goal of all this is obvious. To deter future terrorist attacks and calm the anger of the Russian people, among whom, understandably, emotions run high.
But some Russians still realize they have gone too far. Putin’s courteous personal spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, a member of Moscow’s educated elite, declined to comment on the torture. He must now understand without a doubt what kind of regime he is talking about and what it is capable of.
Surely we in the West still feel that we should be above this kind of savagery. Confessions should not be obtained through torture. Trials must be fair.
So why hold back, as we seem to be doing, when Russia breaks the rules in this appallingly boastful way? The Russian Federation is now openly a lawless, torturing state, operating publicly and blatantly outside the moral boundaries we normally apply to governments.
President Putin is already widely and accurately denounced as a sinister tyrant, my preferred term for him. Russia’s brief attempt to become a liberal democracy is clearly over.
Westerners generally do not hesitate to denounce the Kremlin’s behavior in most other matters. But with this blood-stained boast he has gone far beyond what is permitted and he is proud of what he has done.
But why aren’t we more dismayed? Are we, too, happy to abandon our civilization because we are angry, precisely when we need it most?
I remember well the national wave of fury at the time against (for example) the IRA bombings of Birmingham pubs in 1974. There was a burning desire for the culprits to be found and punished, and many openly lamented the relatively recent abolition from the gallows.
Shamefully, the suspects, whose convictions were later overturned, were in several cases brutally beaten in custody. This was shocking and wrong. But at least the British government did not deliberately show the beaten men before television cameras.
On the contrary, they tried to hide these events, as they could well do in a country that in those days prided itself on its supposedly civilized police and fair trials.
Since then we have been seduced by thriller television series such as 24, in which US special agent Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland) repeatedly defended torture in practice.
In 2014, a report by Amnesty International UK found that more people in Britain believed torture was acceptable than in Russia, thanks in part to 24 and other popular TV shows such as Homeland and Our Own Homegrown Spooks.
My late brother Christopher, who was generally sympathetic to the Iraq War, was so disturbed by reports of US waterboarding that he offered to submit to the punishment to demonstrate that it could be considered torture.
Does this explain why, when one might have expected a storm of Western horror at graphic reports about the treatment of Moscow suspects, there has actually been none? There should be.
I believe this is because, after the mass murder of September 11, 2001, centuries of civilized restraint were cast aside in a red fog of rage, which has yet to dissipate.
I also believe this behavior was wrong, practically and morally. Torture doesn’t work, and if you too have torture chambers, what exactly do you stand for when you go to war against despots?
However, after 9/11, memos circulated at high levels in Washington that timidly permitted “enhanced interrogations,” including waterboarding. In fact, it is a deliberate drowning, not simulated, but real. In 2008, my late brother Christopher, who was generally sympathetic to the Iraq War and had good relations with members of the George W. Bush administration, became concerned about such methods.
He bravely offered to submit to waterboarding. The description of it is still available on the Internet and I recommend it to anyone. It is characteristically witty and also very graphic.
The actual moment was “as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly placed on my face.” Unable to determine whether I was inhaling or exhaling, and more out of sheer panic than mere water, I activated the preset signal and felt the incredible relief of being lifted out of my sodden, suffocating layers.
Your conclusion? “If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.”
People will say anything to stop this and of course they do. For those tempted by the “time bomb” argument for torture (that a suspect can be forced to reveal key information that could prevent an attack), he cited the advice of Malcolm Nance, a Navy veteran. the US and distinguished counterterrorism expert.
He said: ‘Once you’ve asked the famous “time bomb” question, and once you assume you’re right, what won’t you do? Is waterboarding not giving results fast enough? Is the terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then he brings the screws, the tweezers, the electrodes and the grid.
A large fire is seen at Crocus Town Hall on the western edge of Moscow, where at least 139 people died and 180 more were injured.
Another outspoken opponent of torture was the late Senator John McCain, a former US Navy pilot who was horribly mistreated by the North Vietnamese after being shot down and captured. Even as he lay dying in the late summer of 2018, he doggedly opposed then-President Donald Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel as CIA chief.
Trump, who believes torture works, eventually appointed Haspel, who had worked at one of the CIA’s notorious “black sites” in Thailand. American media have reported that she participated in the agency’s “extraordinary rendition program,” under which captured militants were handed over to foreign governments and held in secret facilities, where they were tortured by CIA personnel.
And this is our side in the great war for civilization. How did we get to this? England formally abolished torture in 1640. It was cruel and it didn’t work. You can choose your reason for opposing it, moral or practical, but I really think we should protest more strongly against an abomination, which is indescribably disgusting to those who suffer from it and which corrupts and scars those who inflict it.