Training materials drawn up secretly in recent years tell interrogators they should aim to provoke humiliation, insecurity, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear in the prisoners they are questioning, and suggest ways in which this can be achieved.
One PowerPoint training aid created in September 2005 tells trainee military interrogators that prisoners should be stripped before they are questioned. "Get them naked," it says. "Keep them naked if they do not follow commands." Another manual prepared around the same time advises the use of blindfolds to put prisoners under pressure.
A manual prepared in April 2008 suggests that "Cpers" – captured personnel – be kept in conditions of physical discomfort and intimidated. Sensory deprivation is lawful, it adds, if there are "valid operational reasons". It also urges enforced nakedness.
More recent training material says blindfolds, earmuffs and plastic handcuffs are essential equipment for military interrogators, and says that while prisoners should be allowed to sleep or rest for eight hours in each 24, they need be permitted only four hours unbroken sleep. It also suggests that interrogators tell prisoners they will be held incommunicado unless they answer questions.
The 1949 Geneva conventions prohibit any "physical or moral coercion", in particular any coercion employed to obtain information.
The revelations come after the Guardian published US military documents leaked to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks revealing details of torture, summary executions and war crimes in Iraq.
GEOFF THOMPSON: It's the death in Iraq the Department of Defence and the Howard government never wanted revealed to the Australian public.
Forty-three-year-old Iranian, Tanik Mahmud, was among 66 men captured by 20 Australian Special Forces troops in Iraq's western desert on the 11th of April 2003.
Hours later he was dead after being transported to Baghdad on a Chinook helicopter flown by the UK's RAF.
His death was recorded as a heart attack but no autopsy was conducted.
Other evidence canvassed in the British press suggests he was assaulted.
interrogation...
Training materials drawn up secretly in recent years tell interrogators they should aim to provoke humiliation, insecurity, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear in the prisoners they are questioning, and suggest ways in which this can be achieved.
One PowerPoint training aid created in September 2005 tells trainee military interrogators that prisoners should be stripped before they are questioned. "Get them naked," it says. "Keep them naked if they do not follow commands." Another manual prepared around the same time advises the use of blindfolds to put prisoners under pressure.
A manual prepared in April 2008 suggests that "Cpers" – captured personnel – be kept in conditions of physical discomfort and intimidated. Sensory deprivation is lawful, it adds, if there are "valid operational reasons". It also urges enforced nakedness.
More recent training material says blindfolds, earmuffs and plastic handcuffs are essential equipment for military interrogators, and says that while prisoners should be allowed to sleep or rest for eight hours in each 24, they need be permitted only four hours unbroken sleep. It also suggests that interrogators tell prisoners they will be held incommunicado unless they answer questions.
The 1949 Geneva conventions prohibit any "physical or moral coercion", in particular any coercion employed to obtain information.
The revelations come after the Guardian published US military documents leaked to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks revealing details of torture, summary executions and war crimes in Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/25/uk-military-interrogation-manuals
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murky interrogation...
GEOFF THOMPSON: It's the death in Iraq the Department of Defence and the Howard government never wanted revealed to the Australian public.
Forty-three-year-old Iranian, Tanik Mahmud, was among 66 men captured by 20 Australian Special Forces troops in Iraq's western desert on the 11th of April 2003.
Hours later he was dead after being transported to Baghdad on a Chinook helicopter flown by the UK's RAF.
His death was recorded as a heart attack but no autopsy was conducted.
Other evidence canvassed in the British press suggests he was assaulted.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3259877.htm