Torture (US Code)

1. You are working with a high level individual in the office of Homeland Security. Your team has been advised that an individual has been captured who has in his possession information about sleeper cells of terrorists that have been embedded in several locations on the East Coast of the United States. .

2. The individual was born in the U.S. of Pakistani parents who were in graduate school in the U.S. at the time of his birth. Upon the completion of their education, they moved back to Pakistan.

3. The individual in question has apparently been in touch with terrorist elements in the mountains of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. He is currently 30 years old and speaks English fluently, along with several other languages. He is in custody at a secret location in the U.S.

4. There is ample evidence to indicate that the individual has knowledge about the plans of the sleeper cells that will result in significant destruction of people and property in the US. The individual refuses to talk, despite the use of traditional methods to extract information. The interrogators want to use much more forceful methods, some of which might be viewed as torture, even though these methods have not fully been defined as such.

5. Torture (US Code) • “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control; • (2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from— (A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; • (B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; • (C) the threat of imminent death; or • (D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

6. Torture (Bybee Memo 2002) (1) Torture is defined as "acts inflicting...severe pain or suffering, whether mental or physical." (2) Physical pain "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." (3) Mental pain "must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years

7. Torture (UN Convention) Torture means 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

8. Argument For Torture • Greater Good of Society versus Individual

9. Against Torture • Right of Individual Not to be tortured