Ruddock: Sleep Deprivation `Not Torture'

Philip Ruddock, interviewed on this weekend's Insiders about the new trial plans for Guantanamo Bay detainees, claims that sleep deprivation is not torture, but a legitimate coercive technique.

Well, is it?

Experts on torture tend to disagree. The Geneva Convention itself is hazy on the topic, though it does prohibit `any form of torture or cruelty' to prisoners of war' - something the US has neatly sidestepped by declaring Guantanamo Bay detainees `enemy combatants'. Human Rights Watch have identified the difficulty in defining a `cruel and inhuman' practice as a barrier - and perhaps a deliberate one - to enforcement. Recent legislation passed in the US Senate does nothing to assist this problem.

But let's put all of this aside. Sleep deprivation is considered reasonable by the Ruddocks and Rumsfelds of this world on the basis that it may help extract evidence that will foil major terrorist attacks and save lives. The effects of sleep deprivation can be profound - hallucination, psychosis, hearing voices, and unawareness of time and place.

Sounds like the perfect way to elicit an iron-clad, perfectly accurate, legitimate confession from someone, doesn't it?

Sleep deprivation is not only inhumane, it's a stupid way of gaining evidence. If world leaders don't have sufficient humanity to work out what's torture and what isn't, perhaps the Convention needs to be redrafted to take recent international developments into account.