Canadian boy held in Guantanamo from the age of 16

What??? I asked Nick to give us an example of what he believes would constitute mental torture, as he doesn't think sleep deprivation falls under that category.

So maybe you can also give it a go.

Give us an example then of inflicted "severe mental sufferring" that would constitute torture in your opinion.

I think what astonishes you is that someone might disagree with you. Did you read the findngs on the use of techniques against IRA prisoners? Note that they did not conclude for torture. Some of this stuff is clearly in a gray area and depends on circumstances, e.g., sleep deprivation.


Suggested? How about a clear answer? It doesn't need to go on anywhere near that long, and I am skeptical that it did in the same recurring pattern for 21 days, i.e., moving cells every three hours.

Hazza, why don't you tell us exactly how you think the sleeping patterns of a detainee should be handled? What would not constitute "sleep deprivation" in your book?

OK you can't propose an alternative. Have a think about what other options there are and get back to me. I warn you: it will take some time.

I would consider very few things torture. I would however consider long-term sensory deprivation a bit out of bounds in the majority of cases.

Coolness, but wanting is not enough. You'd have to regularly & publicly condemn for several years on say, an internet forum for hindi-speaking expatriates living in Greenland in order to have real effect and meaning.

Giving prisoners 8 hours of continuous, uninterrupted sleep every night would not constitute sleep deprivation.

I think that's the dumbest question I've ever answered here...

Dumb. Just dumb. Wait for it. I have one more. It's squeaking out... Dumb.


It isn't above board. It's shitty. Guantanamo was a shit idea. Shittily orchestrated and is still shit to this day. It has left the reputation of the Nation covered in shit. But this kid, he was a 15 year translator or bomb video maker, not being used as infantry. His family was a node in the overall terrorist network. He was in fact raised to be doing what he was doing. His presence was no accident. That's why he was taken and probably kept alive. As to why they keep any of them so long after they have what they want. I don't know.


Now that is clever. And sadly, especially in light of certain recent Senate votes (including our future presidential candidates [yes, both of them, suck it Eurovol]) sadly, pretty accurate. But I suspect those people who have declared themselves to be members of Al Queda do hate the US, and it's free drinkin', freewheelin' , porn exportin', Israel supportin' uppitiy women cavortin' ways. Ask 'em. I do not think that they will just up and go home, if Afghansitan is again ruled by the Taliban. When you are a fundamentalist and doing Allah's work. You can't stop until the work is done, and the means the world is won, by Islam, their brand of course.

Problem is that despite pretending you don't have an answer either. Do you seriously think that torture is going to give you reliable information???

Like I said, people confess to all sorts of things when they're tortured...

Already have given it go.

Other than living with my ex-wife examples fail me right now. But I'll work on it.

You're awfully stringent. I don't know too many people who get that much sleep even in one night per week.

So, would you prosecute if the sleep was interrupted for some reason, such as having to go to the bathroom, or if the detainee refused to sleep, or if the sleep were only for 5, 6 or 7 hours?

You're right. I was having a test done at a hospital in Stuttgart a few years ago and when they stuck this 4 inch probe into my shoulder I admitted to being Josef Mengele.

They didn't appreciate the Humor.

I will admit readily, I am ignorant regarding the Afghan campaign in the 1980's. I wouldn't expect you to have an in depth knowledge of events before your birth.

So what you're actually looking for in your poorly worded questions is what I would consider an acceptable amount of sleep deprivation that would not be considered torture. Is that right?

OK - I'll answer. Anything that does not leave the person in distress and has them hallucinating or showing any of the other symptoms of sleep deprivation.

But of course, if you don't get that response and the distress, then there's hardly a point to doing it at all, is there? It's kinda like using thumb screws - you have to twist them until they hurt - and then it's torture. If you just turn the screws until they are firmly attached, it's not torture, but also pointless...

So if sleep deprivation is used, it is necessarily to torture someone.

Yes I do. There may be a lot of guff inbetween, but eventually the truth will out.

Seriously, political arguments aside, I don't think moving cells every three hours, even around the clock, is even remotely "torture". The examples above of mothers nursing newborns or people going through military basic training are perfect examples of worse experiences. I suspect if my drill sergeant had ever offered us 21 days lock-up with three hour cell rotations there would have been 120 Mofos fighting to take him up on the offer. It would have been heaven. Hell I got woken up between 1-3 times a night every day for 105 days.

WTF?! Are you seriously saying that you know absolutely nothing about things that happened before you were born?

Hazza, what if someone who had worked as an interrogator told you that the purpose of not giving someone 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep was to generate some level of dependence on the interrogator in order to break them down enough so that they will come to trust the interrogator as a "provider" enough that they will talk- not to torture them, and not to make them delirious. Would you OK altering of sleep patterns for that reason?

BTW, DH has pointed out above that there is sleep disruption and some deprivation during military basic training (you can guess at least part of the reason why from what I posted above in this thread).

Also, I don't think anyone could really interpret the UN CAT as mandating eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Bipa, the US could not have foreseen the rise of the Taliban and their alliance with Al-Qaeda when it was assisting the mudjahadeen in the 1980s against the Soviet Union, and the assistance provided then is irrelevant to whether or not former mudjahadeen are carrying out terror activities today.

So all those people who were tortured and then confessed to being witches in the middle ages actually were?

Nice one...

No, but I am saying that not being alive makes it harder to know stuff from then.

Have you seen the video?

That kid was severely mentally distressed - ie tortured.

Maybe they thought they actually were. People believed in all that nonsense in the Middle Ages.

How would you know? You certainly weren't alive back then

I strongly suggest some remedial history study. Not many witches burned in the Middle Ages, actually. It happened a bit later.

The kid was freaking out. Yes he was distressed. I wouldn't call it severe. I've seen kids that got arrested for DUI freak out just as much. They weren't being tortured. I think that severe distress is a few steps beyond 'Don't taze me bro.' That Iranian kid who got the shit shcoked out of him in the library in California wasn't even being tortured. He was just being tazed. There's a difference. I think you are maybe being a bit too sensitive, If for all the right reasons.

Yes, I guess when you're delirious with pain, then you might think that.

Get lost, you troll.

You have missed the point.

Perhaps you have...

Using tazers on prisoners would definitely count as torture.

Very nice debating technique. Suppose I shouldn't expect you to know that the classical witch burning period was in the Early Modern Period and during Reformation, and not during the Middle Ages which start around the 5th century and preceed it.

Perhaps polish your rhetoric skills while you're doing that remedial work?

Your sniping at me is also a good example of debating technique.

History is not my subject. I have already said that I will confess ignorance when I am ignorant of something.

You are probably too proud to do this.

Is there actually one single, honest, humane cell in Conquistador's excuse for a body.
I hereby rebuke all of his posts regarding anything that has to do with life as we know it.
He really needs medical help.

As I rebuke you for having the gall to attempt to justify the best efforts of a regime coming the closest to re-enacting that word since the fall of the former.

Are we forgetting that this individual is still a child? Or doesn't that seem to mean anything in the brutalized mentalities of some of our more extreme American members?

Closer than Pol Pot, Maoist China, North Korea, the Soviet Union, etc, Sin? Get real- you deserve to be rebuked again for that piece of ill-conceived rubbish.

Stalin and Pol Pot would be proud of your mentality. You Sir, have no humanity.

I think at the end of the day, that everyone agrees that its pretty awful that anyone 15 year old or adult would ever participate in war. The plight of the child soldier is one of those human tragedies that is altogether more awful because it is avoidable. War is further proof that after thousands of years, that we as a race still can't get it together.

But this young man was not a child soldier, caught on the battlefield with a weapon in hand. This young man, was either translating for various nodes in a Terrorist network, that is intent on rewinning Afghanistan and then the world, or he was helping to construct the bombs themselves. The male members of his family were deeply involved in the Jihad. He was raised to be an operative in terrorist networks, not a soldier in the field. He is unfortunatly not an innnocent and he falls in between the cracks of international law and a representative societal standard.

Torture, in the classic sense, of true, lasting, physical, or mental harm, is unreliable in interrogation methods. but what constitutes torture is debatable. What constiutes harm, and especially lasting harm is also debatable and there will be no answers today.

As to what should have been done with him, or what should be done with him now, that is quite a question. I would think that a fair trial according to the laws of a pertaining state would be in order, with attention given to his age at the time and a fair show of the evidence. But beware those of you who sympathize, if the law used is Afghani, then he will be in much worse of a situation than even in Guantanamo bay.

Perhaps you have confused with someone else. I do not want to believe you are delusional enough to believe such a thing. At least read the thread before you hurl such a groundless accusation.

@garibaldi
Do you have lawyer insurance? Be very afraid.

You have to be kidding. There are others since then who have come far closer. One thing that is very important about the Shoah, and the horrors of WWII in general is that they require no exaggeration. Comparisons doubly so. If you want to be right. Be right. But stop being so dramatic. If you are going to compare a nation, any nation to the 3rd Reich, at least be close to correct. Otherwise, there are millions, literally tens of millions of people whose memory you are insulting in your flippant comparison.


We are not. He is not. He is now 21 years of age.

Not when he was captured, not when he was imprisoned and not when he was tortured...

@ryhntyntyn,

The holocaust was never mentioned, so don't try muddying the waters. We're talking about a child being captured in a country which, while it may not be his own, is certainly not the country of his captors. My question is this: Would the regime of the Third Reich have tortured children? Would Stalin's regime have tortured children? Would Pol Pot's regime have tortured children? I think the answer to all three would be, "Yes". Therefore we have a similarity. Again, if this kid had been waving a Kalashnikov at The Red Army, you'd probably be jollying him along. Just because the colour of the emblem on the uniform of his enemy has changed, so has your opinion. Or are you saying that you were on The Red Army's side all along?

Allegedly tortured.

Sin, seriously, do you think waking the dude up every three hours and changing rooms is torture? Seriously?

Ah! You know, maybe you're right. Maybe tickling him under the arms once a week can't really be called torture. Of course I believe his captors, implicitly. Wouldn't you?

It's on video - we saw it...

So why did they do it then? Was it so he could try out all the cells and choose the one he like best?

He was moved every three hours, no description of how long the moving process might have taken, shackling him up, gathering bedding, belongings, going to the new cell, setting eveyrthing up again and then trying to go back to sleep, with the lights on and probably aware that another move is coming at some stage but not knowing when.

Sounds like perfect rest to me.

Welll I guess it would be the stick compionent of the carrot and stick equation. The subject of torture is always going to have a lot of grey areas and fine lines, not to mentio slippery slopes. I'M just wondering if you guys really think this frequent flyer treatment is clearly a form of torture. Because frankly, I think I've been through much worse personally and it wouldn't fit my definition of torture. Water boarding yes. But three hour wakeups? No way.

So the torture actually takes place on the video? Not how the BBC reported it.

Sleep deprivation although not as bad as waterboarding, is stil phsycological torture and barbaric in my honest opinion, if you don't think it is you should try it. It's often used by the police in the UK, they do this to gain the upper hand on "suspects". If you're tired, ratty and not thinking straight you'll make mistakes. Just how reliable this "evidence" will then be is another question. I believe in that situation most people would say/agree to anything just to get some rest.