A false confession, that is. Here's the long and short of it:

Quote :

"Long story short: Man is staying in hotel in NYC during the 9/11/2001 attacks. Hotel empties after attacks and device is found in man's hotel room closet that allows communication with airline pilots. Man is Egyptian national, and FBI questions him. Man denies owning device. FBI agent threatens that man's family will be tortured in Egypt. Man confesses, ultimately spending a month in jail before airline pilot shows up at hotel asking for radio left in man's room back. Whoops! Lawsuits ensue. From Steve Bergstein's Psychosounds blog, where I found this: "Higazy then realized he had a choice: he could continue denying the radio was his and his family suffers ungodly torture in Egypt or he confesses and his family is spared. Of course, by confessing, Higazy's life is worth garbage at that point, but ... well, that's why coerced confessions are outlawed in the United States." Good thing the FBI doesn't do this any more. Right? We never would have known any of this as the US Court of Appeals in Manhattan redacted the description of the torture threats in its decision, but someone posted an unredacted decision on the web for a brief time. And a PDF of that is what's making the rounds now. In it, the court claims it redacted the information about the torture threats to protect Higazy and his family. The story doesn't say what they're being protected from. "

The American Board Association's article on the matter.
Court documents confirming the story.

Here is proof of a very real, very recent incident in which the mere THREAT of torture made a man decide to confess to a crime he didn't commit. Torture produces unreliable intel at best, and will get people to say whatever they can to make the torture stop.

What say you, Jack Bauer fans, to this?

11/2/2007 1:23:37 PM

I'm confused.

Torture always seems to work in comic books.

11/2/2007 1:26:59 PM

It just seems like lazy police work. Whether he in fact owned the device or not, it seems like there should have been follow on to the "confession" of said device.

Who in their right mind feels secure knowing that some guy with a communications device was caught, without anyone following the trail back to find out why he had, what he intended to do with it, who was he working with, etc.

I didn't read any of the additional documents, maybe this procedure was followed...which begs the question, if the FBI/CIA couldn't find shit about this man, would they then not start to wonder what he confessed to?

Police state ftl.

11/2/2007 1:34:21 PM

Quote :

"Templeton unhooked the polygraph, and according to Higazy, called Higazy a baby and told him that a nine-year-old could tolerate this pain. Templeton left the room to get Higazy water, and upon his return, Higazy asked whether anybody else had ever suffered physical pain during the polygraph, to which Templeton replied: “[i]t never happened to anyone who told the truth.” Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.” Higazy later said, “I knew that I couldn’t prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger.” He explained that “[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family’s in danger. If I say this device is mine, I’m screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”"

and apparently a hotel worker lied and said he found the device in the safe with the man's other belongings, when he really found it on a table by itself.

11/2/2007 1:42:53 PM

I've always thought that torture wouldn't work anyway. When people inflict pain upon you, you'll tell them anything they want to hear if it will make them stop hurting you. How are they going to know if it's a lie or not? Who's to say that you won't simply make something up, just so that they'll stop hurting you? And if they're already biased against you and suspect you of something anyway, are they really going to believe you when you say that you don't know what they're talking about?

11/2/2007 1:43:29 PM

But it works for Jack Bauer!

11/2/2007 1:48:43 PM

spöokyjon, why do you hate FREEDOM?

Just wait till all the torture supporters and apologetics tag team your ass (4-5 users come to mind, but I won't name them).

11/2/2007 2:11:26 PM

The key here is that they didn't actually torture him, they just told him that they would (quite possibly a bluff?)... Nothing cruel or unusual or anti-Geneva about that.

11/2/2007 2:13:29 PM

^except thats the whole point. You cannot use torture or the idea of torture because each man has a different tolerance level. Someone else might have made it through some of the torture and then confessed the same thing. End result = bad intel.

11/2/2007 2:15:23 PM

Quote :

"Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.""

I still have terrible memories of the liveleak video of the Egyptian police holding a guy down, sodomizing him with a broom stick, and then sending it via videophone to all of his friends to scare them away from crime.

As far as I've read torture is often ineffective on well trained/indoctrinated terrorists. If you threaten their families they say that it's ok because they'll all be in paradise soon. If they do talk they could just divulge something that was considered but not but into action and cause a huge security scare nationwide.

[Edited on November 2, 2007 at 2:23 PM. Reason : .]

11/2/2007 2:22:36 PM

here is one of them ^^^

well i hope and dearly wish that one day there is a big robbery on your neighbourhood, and your wife/daughter/mother is threatened with rape, and she ends up falsely confessing because of that.

and then i hope you will be standing by the street corner saying:

Quote :

"The key here is that they didn't actually rape my wife/daughter/mother, they just told her that they would (quite possibly a bluff?)... Nothing cruel or unusual or anti-Geneva about that."

11/2/2007 2:22:57 PM

I'm not saying that the intel is going to be reliable. I'm not saying that this is a good thing for the FBI to be doing. I'm just saying that it's not really torture.

[Edited on November 2, 2007 at 3:39 PM. Reason : .]

11/2/2007 3:36:26 PM

Torture is not limited to physical acts.

11/2/2007 3:40:15 PM

The alarming thing here, which no one is mentioning or talking about in the "MSM," is that the government put up a PDF of the court transcript originally. A blogger got a hold of it the first day. The second day, the court removed the PDF document and put up a new one with all of the nasty torture stuff removed. They said it was a matter of "national security." They are trying to get the blogger to hand it back over, but he says he won't.

11/2/2007 3:41:16 PM

Quote :

"Torture is not limited to physical acts"

are you trying to tell me that...for example...threatening "if you do not answer us truthfully we will hunt down your family and kill them" is torture? please elaborate because saying torture is not limited to physical acts is confusing...unless you mean something like sensory deprivation could be torture, but i'd call that a physical act...cause I don't think a threat could ever really be construed as torture but maybe I'm missing something

11/2/2007 3:42:49 PM

Quote :

"Definitions of torture on the Web: * anguish: extreme mental distress * unbearable physical pain * agony: intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain; "an agony of doubt"; "the torments of the damned" * torment: torment emotionally or mentally * distortion: the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean * subject to torture; "The sinners will be tormented in Hell, according to the Bible" * the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason; "it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession" wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn * Torture is defined by the United Nations Convention Against Torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture"

11/2/2007 3:47:57 PM

Quote :

"are you trying to tell me that...for example...threatening "if you do not answer us truthfully we will hunt down your family and kill them" is torture?"

Say, for example, Higazy was a US citizen and the FBI agent had said we will torture your family. That would most likely not be torture, since Higazy would understand that this is very unlikely; for the most part the FBI doesn't (knock on wood) torture US citizens.

However, the FBI agent said that Higazy's family in Egypt would be tortured. This is torture, because the threatened violence was very believable to Higazy. He knows that Egypt is not exactly a bastion of human rights--the Egyptian police can and do play roughly.

So, yes, verbal threats can be torture in the proper context.

[Edited on November 2, 2007 at 4:30 PM. Reason : ]

11/2/2007 4:28:28 PM

so, if I am made uncomfortable by someone threatening me with jail time if I don't tell them what I know about something, is that torture? I mean, jail time would be torturous to me. It would be horrible and painful. So clearly, threatening me with that would be torture, under many of these definitions...

11/2/2007 7:02:51 PM

Are you this obtuse on purpose?

'uncomfortable' =/= 'severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental'

Regardless, jail time is not torture because it is the legal punishment for a crime. Jail time is the end result of a legal process, usually involving a judge and jury.

11/2/2007 7:50:15 PM

hey, being in jail would cause me severe metal pain. I'd probably get assraped and beat up, too. maybe even shanked a couple times. That's clearly physical pain. So, the definition still fits.

Oh, and what if the the punishment for a crime by law were waterboarding? Would that be OK, since it was the end result of the legal system?

11/2/2007 7:52:49 PM

In the United States, waterboarding would probably fall under cruel and unusual punishment. So, yes, it would still be torture.

Regardless, waterboarding or jail time as punishment for crime (assuming due process) is not the same thing as waterboarding to coerce information.

[Edited on November 2, 2007 at 8:00 PM. Reason : ]

11/2/2007 7:59:34 PM

but, what about threatening jail time. that's the point here. The OP talked about coercion using the threat of torture, and that is what I am getting at.

11/2/2007 8:02:23 PM

Again, it depends on the context.

In the right context, the threat of torture is torture.

In a different context, the threat of torture is not torture.

In the right context, the threat of jail time probably could be considered torture.

In a different context--say contempt of court--the threat of jail time would not be considered torture.

11/2/2007 8:05:58 PM

unfortunately, laws aren't written to consider context. They generally say "act X is OK" or "act X is not OK." I agree with you, btw, that the threat of torture isn't always torture.

11/2/2007 8:09:44 PM

Quote :

"unfortunately, laws aren't written to consider context."

I disagree. We have juries and the concept of reasonable doubt for the exact purpose of placing actions in context.

11/2/2007 8:15:44 PM

except that we can't take it to a jury in order to consider what is "torture" when we are interrogating a suspect.

11/2/2007 8:19:31 PM

if I was in a position where my family would be harmed if i didnt "cooperate" you can be damn sure i would "cooperate"

meaning, if I believed my family was in danger, and the only way to remove that danger would be to tell my captors the lie(s) they wanted to hear .... I would tell whatever lies they wanted to incriminate myself -- and possibly others -- that i was required to do.

11/3/2007 2:30:28 AM

I'd pull a Keyzer Sozay and murder my family in front of my captors

11/3/2007 11:29:21 AM

but that's not really surprising.

11/3/2007 3:58:51 PM

but what about aaronburro trolling this thread? would us having to read his stupidity be considered torture?

11/3/2007 6:17:35 PM

considering I'm not trolling, I guess that doesn't really count, does it?

11/3/2007 6:37:14 PM

Quote :

"so, if I am made uncomfortable by someone threatening me with jail time if I don't tell them what I know about something, is that torture? I mean, jail time would be torturous to me. It would be horrible and painful. So clearly, threatening me with that would be torture, under many of these definitions..."

you are either that dense or trolling.

Quote :

"hey, being in jail would cause me severe metal pain. I'd probably get assraped and beat up, too. maybe even shanked a couple times. That's clearly physical pain. So, the definition still fits. Oh, and what if the the punishment for a crime by law were waterboarding? Would that be OK, since it was the end result of the legal system?"

example #2

Quote :

"but, what about threatening jail time. that's the point here. The OP talked about coercion using the threat of torture, and that is what I am getting at."

example #3. I mean if you really are that dense that you think threatening someone with lawful punishments such as prison sentences is torture more power to you....

11/3/2007 6:42:49 PM

the fact that you don't get the point of that shows how stupid you really are. Some people claim that threatening someone with torture is, in fact, torture. The definition of torture includes causing mental pain. Now, shut the fuck up and go back to being your normal racist fucking self.

11/3/2007 6:45:37 PM

racist? hahahahahahahahahahahahhahah you really play the troll part well. Good job, sir.

Next you are going to whine about how parents torture their kids because they threaten them with 'time out'

go fuck yourself and take the stupid trolling else where.

11/3/2007 6:49:48 PM

I don't think I'm alone in saying that my outrage over the whole torture issue would be a lot less if said torture were being applied on different people.

Torture to get a confession out of a guy who might have done something is stupid and wrong, for exactly the reasons mentioned in this thread.

Unfortunately I have to make a slight departure from Constitutional norms -- not that I necessarily think that those norms apply to foreign combatants, but I like to stick to them as much as I can all the same -- on the question of reasonable doubt here. There was a reasonable possibility that this Hizgazy fellow hadn't done anything. Hell, I don't even think you'd need a court to tell you that.

But if tomorrow we caught al-Zawahiri just over the Afghanistan border, we can say with resolute certainty that he has done bad shit to us and has knowledge of bad shit to be done in the future. Some of you might try to argue against me, but I think most will agree that there is no reasonable doubt about these things.

Now, were he a US citizen or even a lawful combatant as recognized by the Geneva Conventions, I would still say, "Well, we gotta give him a trial to establish whether that doubt exists." But he isn't those things, so I'm inclined to be less strict.

So I say have at him.

You're not looking for a confession, first of all -- you're past that point -- you're looking for intelligence. And in these circumstances I'll wager that it's a hell of a lot easier to just spill the truth than it is to concoct lies, especially when either one has an equal chance of getting the torture to stop. Hizgazy was in an unfortunate position of having no guilty truth to spill, so because of incompetent implementation of the procedures he had to lie. This would not be the case of someone known beyond reasonable doubt to have useful information.

So, in a nutshell: quit torturing low-level peons and people who might not be guilty. Save it for the known quantities.

11/5/2007 1:00:23 PM