Intimidation techniques found in British interrogation manual
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, Oct 26, IRNA -- The British military has been training interrogators in techniques that include threats, sensory deprivation and enforced nakedness in an apparent breach of the Geneva conventions, it was reported Tuesday.
Training materials drawn up secretly in recent years reveal interrogation techniques aimed to provoke humiliation, insecurity, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear in prisoners.
A manual prepared in April 2008 suggests that 'Cpers' – captured personnel – be kept in conditions of physical discomfort and intimidated and adds that sensory deprivation is lawful if there are 'valid operational reasons', according to the Guardian newspaper.
One PowerPoint training aid created in September 2005 was also said to tell trainee military interrogators that prisoners should be stripped before they are questioned, while another prepared around the same time advises the use of blindfolds to put prisoners under pressure.
More recent training material describe blindfolds, earmuffs and plastic handcuffs as 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.
The Guardian said that in contrast, the 1949 Geneva conventions prohibits any 'physical or moral coercion', in particular any coercion employed to obtain information.
The revelations comes ahead of lawyers presenting evidence at the High Court in London that more than 100 Iraqis, held and interrogated by British forces between 2003 and 2007, were tortured in a systematic manner.
The abuse, documented by Public Interest Lawyers, includes 59 allegations of detainees being hooded, 11 of electric shocks, 122 of sound deprivation through the use of earmuffs, 52 of sleep deprivation, 131 of sight deprivation using blackened goggles, 39 of enforced nakedness and 18 allegations that detainees were kept awake by pornographic DVDs played on laptops.
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