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Essay on Interrogation By Sleep Deprivation
Interrogation is a methodology employed during the interview of a person, referred to as a "source", to obtain information that the source would not otherwise willingly disclose. A typical purpose is not necessarily to force a confession, but rather to develop, playing on the source's character, sufficient rapport as to prompt the source to disclose information valuable to the interrogator.”(Zulawski, 2000) A well-conducted interrogation will not usually involve torture, which in practice is widely acknowledged to be ineffective at producing true, accurate, correct and reliable information.
Allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have raised questions about the applicability of the law of war to interrogations for military intelligence purposes. Particular issues involve the level of protection to which the detainees are entitled under the Geneva Conventions of 1949, whether as prisoners of war or civilian protected persons, or under some other status. After photos of prisoner abuse became public, the Defense Department (DOD) released a series of internal documents disclosing policy deliberations about the appropriate techniques for interrogating persons the Administration had deemed to be unlawful combatants and who resisted the standard methods of questioning detainees. Investigations related to the allegations at Abu Ghraib revealed that some of the techniques discussed for unlawful combatants had come into use in Iraq, although none of the prisoners there was deemed to be an unlawful combatant.
Some prisoners are stripped and threatened with ferocious dogs. Some are sexually humiliated. Some are deprived of sleep, and others are kept for long periods in isolation. Many are denied visits from family, lawyers and the International Red Cross. And in select cases, the prisoners simply disappear into a shadow-world of secret detention centers scattered around the globe.” (Walters, 1999)In late 2002 and early 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved specific interrogation techniques for extracting information from Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba......
