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Notícies :: antifeixisme : criminalització i repressió : mitjans i manipulació : pobles i cultures vs poder i estats : guerra |
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Description of different torture methods used in Spanish police stations
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per La Terra Lliure |
02 mar 2008
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Document taken with permission from the website of the Basque association TAT (Group Against Torture) |
Document taken with permission from the website of the Basque association TAT (Group Against Torture)
According to the UN, in the first article of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment: "For the purposes of this Convention, the term "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, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions".
Following this universally adopted definition, when we talk about torture we are referring to serious suffering inflicted upon a person, whether these are physical or psychological, when they are inflicted by a public official or a person carrying out public functions.
The torture methods used against citizens under incommunicado arrest have been scientifically devised in order to obtain the set objectives. The experience of torture involves a process of questioning one's own identity. The methods have varied throughout the years. Currently, more sophisticated methods are used, in an attempt to avoid leaving marks on the surface of the body that may be detected in a medical examination. Thus, we have observed an increase in the use of so-called psychological techniques.
Methods of torture have usually been classified into physical and psychological methods. The former are those that imply physical abuse and/or causing physical suffering. Psychological methods are those which, without physical abuse, produce an alteration in the psychological state of a person. However, the fact that any physical suffering carries psychological suffering with it must be taken into account; and that many methods of torture can be considered as combined methods, and further, that usually several techniques are simultaneously used against a person. Among the most prominent methods, we can find the following:
• 1. BLOWS: This is the abuse most reported by the detainees. Generally, they report that the blows they suffer are widespread, and these may be with hands, fists, or various objects such as rolled up newspapers, phone books, sticks covered with newspapers or insulating tape… These blows are usually applied to various sensitive parts of the body, such as the head, stomach, legs, arms… Sometimes the blows are directly applied and on other occasions the part of the body to be beaten is covered with blankets etc. all this is in order not to leave marks on the body of the detainee.
• 2. PHYSICAL EXHAUSTION: Causing physical extenuation to the detainee is a method that is used with more and ore intensity, generally by obliging the detainee to remain on his or her feet for hours, even days, and this year we have noted the increase of the obligation to take up and remain in abnormal postures, especially by the Ertzaintza (Basque police). Physical exhaustion of the detainee is also obtained by making him or her do physical exercises such as press-ups, sit-ups etc.
• 3. THE BAG: A technique whereby the detainee is deprived of oxygen for a certain period, to the extent that detainees often pass out. This method consists in putting a bag over the detainee's head and tightening it round the neck, causing suffocation. There are accounts by detainees where they say how at the point of asphyxia, they had the feeling of dying, to the point that they lost control of their sphincters.
• 4. THE BATH: This is another suffocation technique, a torture method that had not been used in the last few years, but which has come up twice in 2002. one of the detainees told us they put her head in a bucket full of water, leaving er in a state of semi-consciousness, lying on the floor. Another detainee told us how they had put his head in the toilet, while they flushed it.
• 5. ELECTRODES: This method of torture consists in applying electric shocks to different parts of the body, usually in sensitive areas such as the sides of the torso, ears, genitals, wrists, feet, breasts...
• 6. VISUAL IMPAIRMENT: It is more and more widespread among all police forces to make it impossible for the detainee to see, in this way amplifying their feeling of helplessness and disorientation. This visual impairment can be produced by blindfolding or placing a hood over the detainee's head (usually in the case of arrests by the Guardia Civil) or by obliging the detainees to keep their head down and their eyes shut.
• 7. THREATS, SHOUTING, HUMILIATIONS: The detainees often tell us how they heard the screams of people who had been arrested with them, or of members of their family or friends whom the police taking part in interrogation had hreatened to arrest, torture or rape. Generally, the threats they report to us refer to themselves (threats about using various methods of torture, death threats...) or to their loved ones.
• 8. SEXUAL ABUSE: This year we have found, through the various accounts that have reached us, that the amount of sexual abuse and aggression has increased considerably, both in the case of women and men. It is the usual norm that detainees are made to partially or fully strip and sometimes take up abusive postures, and that is when sexual abuse takes place. It takes several forms, verbal (threats, humiliations, insults, rape threats), through violence against sexual organs (blows or placing electrodes on them), compulsory nakedness, being groped, obscene movements by the interrogator, even to the point of rape by the Guardia Civil, putting a stick into several male detainees' anuses, and putting what a female detainee believed to be one of the torturers' penises in her mouth.
• 9. STAGED EXECUTIONS: Many of the detainees tell how the torturers threatened to kill them, whether in police remises or during the journey to these premises. There are accounts that tell how at times the simulated execution consists in placing a firearm to the detainee's head, face, etc. and pulling the trigger. Other detainees tell how on the way to the police station, the officers would stop the car making them get out and they were told they would be given a certain amount of time to run, while the police made constant references to Basque citizens that have been found dead in the hills in suspicious circumstances.
• 10. GOOD COP, BAD COP: This technique is often used by the various police forces. They manage to completely disorientate the detainee by passing from a state of alert in the middle of infinite brutality to a semi-calm state with another "nice" officer.
• 11. CONSTANT INTERROGATION: The detainees tell recount how the questioning they suffered was constant, with hardly any time to rest or sleep.
• 12. MAKING THE DETAINEE LISTEN TO OTHER DETAINEES' AND/OR FAMILY MEMBERS' OR FRIENDS' SCREAMS: In more than one account we have found that the detainees tell us how they have heard the screams of pain and suffering, and the weeping of other people who were also under incommunicado arrest. And in the case of the Ertzaintza they say they have heard the voices of their loved ones, as if they were also in police premises. |
Mira també:
http://www.catalansolidarity.org/documents.htm
http://www.catalansolidarity.org/news.htm
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This work is in the public domain |
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Re: Description of different torture methods used in Spanish police stations
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per Redado |
02 mar 2008
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TAT:
The only anti-torture association in the world that will never say anything against assassinations ,kidnappings and bombings. |
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Re: Description of different torture methods used in Spanish police stations
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per . |
02 mar 2008
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iuju! redado sabe ingles! |
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Re: Description of different torture methods used in Spanish police stations
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per antifeixista sempre |
02 mar 2008
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te lo digo en inglés:redado fuck off moterfucker |
