When torture becomes an intelligence tool

CONSIDER the following moral dilemma. You are a senior police officer and you have just arrested the kidnapper of a young child who is still missing. The callous and sneering kidnapper refuses to tell you the whereabouts of the victim. Do you overcome your scruples and physically torture the kidnapper to track down the missing child before it dies?

And if you then admit that torture is sometimes justified to save innocent lives, where do you draw the line? Would you fly suspected terrorists to secret prisons beyond the jurisdiction of your own courts in order to sweat from them any information that might prevent a suicide bombing?

Lest you think my kidnapping scenario is too far-fetched, it was precisely the dilemma facing Wolfgang Daschner, deputy head of the Frankfurt am Main police, in October 2002. He had before him a sleazy character by the name of Magnus Gaefgen, who had admitted kidnapping 11-year-old Jacob von Metzler, the son of a local banker. Gaefgen had been arrested after picking up the ransom money from Jacob's parents. But the little boy had not been released.

Gaefgen refused to say where his victim was. With time running out, Mr Daschner threatened Gaefgen with torture unless he revealed where the boy was hidden. The wretched Gaefgen capitulated immediately, but confessed that he had already murdered Jacob. For the record, Mr Daschner wasn't bluffing - he'd already organised a team to inflict pain on the kidnapper. As a result, Daschner was duly prosecuted and convicted of "aggravated coercion". Opinion polls indicated that 60 per cent of Germans agreed with his actions. Nevertheless, he was fined and put on probation.

I have to admit I'd probably have done what the deputy police chief did in the circumstances - and accept the legal consequences as did Mr Daschner. So anyone who thinks the torture debate is an open-and-shut moral case is being naive. But that said, we can't leave the torture question in some relativist limbo where the state - any state - can turn physical coercion into a global industry.

The case against institutionalised torture is a good one. First, it degrades and dehumanises the torturer, no matter how justified their cause. As a result, sooner or later, the torturers turn on their own people. I get jittery when the state feels it can torture with impunity. They might come for al-Qaeda in the morning, but I have a nasty suspicion they'll come for anti-state libertarians like me by teatime.

The second argument against a regime of torture is that it doesn't work particularly well at supplying useful and credible information. Show me the electrodes or the rubber truncheon and I'll admit to anything you want. There is also the small problem that torture tactics can act as a recruiting sergeant for your enemy - witness the situation in Northern Ireland when it became known that Britain was using disorientation and sleep-deprivation tactics on IRA prisoners.

If the presumption of sane people has to be against torture, why has it become a major issue post 9/11? And why did President Bush's legal council, Alberto Gonzalez, feel the need to send his boss an infamous memo in August 2002 providing a flimsy legal cover for abusing suspected al-Qaeda detainees? Torture, declared Mr Gonzalez, is only torture if it results in "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death".

THE genesis of this modern Inquisition began after the Cold War ended, when the Clinton administration closed down much of the CIA's field operations, stupidly rendering America blind to the rising tide of Jihadist militancy. Britain was not much better, despite having allowed every Islamic radical under the sun to set up shop in London on the DHSS.

As a result, after the 9/11 attacks, the West found itself bereft of any detailed human intelligence regarding al-Qaeda and its myriad offshoots. In a panic, various western intelligence agencies are making up for lost time by trying to wring any scintilla of information they can get from anyone they can lift - and by any means necessary. Hence the "extraordinary renditions" of terrorist suspects to off-the-map locations.

I understand the scale of this self- inflicted intelligence problem. And I accept that interrogation won't be a gentlemanly affair. During the Second World War, the RAF extracted information from captured Luftwaffe pilots by giving them a cup of tea and a long form to fill in - "The usual boring bumf, old chap." German bureaucratic efficiency led the Nazi pilots to fill in the form and unwittingly give away their secrets. That won't work with al-Qaeda.

On the other hand, industrialised torture outside the rule of law - if that is what is going on - will be counter-productive in propaganda terms while yielding little information of value. Certainly, Mr bin Laden is still safe in his cave after four years.

Fortunately, there are signs that America is realising this. Before her current trip to Europe, the US Secretary of Sate, Condoleezza Rice, declared that "renditions take terrorists out of action and save lives". Yesterday, she was backtracking and saying that US interrogators were barred from using cruel or degrading practices wherever in the world they operated.

We need humane rules to conduct interrogations; otherwise, we become beasts. Equally, we have a right to protect ourselves from evil men. The dilemma of where to draw the line felt by Wolfgang Daschner is unlikely to disappear.

However, it would help if the American administration had the courage of its own convictions and did not conduct interrogations of suspects in secret foreign locations but in the US itself. It would also be a big step forward if the CIA devoted less time to running airlines and more to conducting regular undercover work.