Torture History

Throughout the medieval period, it was believed that the only way to keep law and order was to make sure that the people were scared of the punishments given for crimes committed. Medieval Torture & Punishments. examines all the various harsh, and sometimes gruesome, punishments from fines, public shaming, and mutilation to death.

The ticking bomb scenario is a thought experiment designed to demonstrate that torture can be justified in emergency conditions. If there was a bomb hidden somewhere in a major city, would it be justified to torture a captured informant in order to obtain the critical information that could prevent a devastating terrorist attack? In How to Justify Torture, cultural critic Alex Adams examines this thought experiment in depth by exploring the wide range of cultural productions. By critiquing the argument step-by-step, this audiobook reminds us why torture can never be justified.

Perhaps you have heard of the horrible stories of the Spanish, Portuguese, or French inquisition, the Catholic body of persecutors who would arrest the supposed “heathens” and accuse them of witchcraft, heresies, blasphemy, adultery, and a whole list of other sins or crimes. Torture, interrogations, executions, burnings, and other inhumane methods were used to then force, coerce, or kill the victims of this Catholic organization within the church at the time.

The behind-the-scenes look at the biggest—and perhaps the strangest—case in US history: the prosecution of the five detainees accused of planning 9/11.

Meticulously formatted, this is a highly listenable edition of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation and detention programs launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The stories of World War 2 will forever be imprinted in our collective human mind. Unrivaled in loss of life, boundless destruction, and decisions that changed the world as we knew it, these stories have gone down in history. From concentration camps to aerial strikes, the war waged in increasingly brutal ways as it progressed. But how much do you really know about what happened during those years? These are the stories you won’t read about in any textbook. The Wanton massacre of civilians and the torture of prisoners of war was only the beginning. It can be easy to forget the horrors ...

The Convenient Terrorist is the definitive inside account of the capture, torture, and detention of Abu Zubaydah, the first “high-value target” captured by the CIA after 9/11. But was Abu Zubaydah, who is still being indefinitely held by the United States under shadowy circumstances, the blue-ribbon capture that the Bush White House claimed he was?

In the dark days immediately after 9/11, the CIA turned to Dr. James Mitchell to help craft an interrogation program designed to elicit intelligence from just-captured top al-Qa'ida leaders and terror suspects. A civilian contractor who had spent years training U.S. military members to resist...

Widely heralded on publication as a “must-read” (Military Review) and “important window on America’s battle with al-Qaeda” (Washington Post), Ali Soufan’s revelatory account of the war on terror as seen from its front lines changed the way we understand al-Qaeda and how the United States prosecuted the war — and led to hard questions being asked of our leaders.

This is a guide into what some of the punishments were during the medieval period around the world.

Many Americans have condemned the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government.

On 20 May 1999, the South Australian Police were called to investigate a disused bank in the unassuming town of Snowtown, in connection to the disappearance of multiple missing people. The police were not prepared for the chilling scene that awaited them. The officers found six barrels within the abandoned bank vault, each filled with acid and the remains of eight individuals. The smell from inside the vault was so stifling that the police required breathing equipment.

This moving, eye-opening memoir of an innocent man detained at Guantánamo Bay for fifteen years tells a story of humanity in the unlikeliest of places and an unprecedented look at life at Guantánamo.At the age of 18, Mansoor Adayfi left his home in Yemen for a cultural mission to Afghanistan...

The Senate Intelligence Committee Summary Report on Torture is a public document belonging to the American people, arising from the Senate investigation into the CIA’s Interrogation and Detention Program. Commonly known as The Torture Report, the document was made public, with redactions, on December 9, 2009. The events surrounding its investigation, writing, and publication are now the subject of Scott Z. Burns’ film The Report, an Amazon Original (in theaters on 11/15; on Amazon Prime 11/29 from Amazon Studios). Here, you can hear the report in its entirety.

After days spent locked in King Geon's dungeon, October's afraid her sanity has reached the point of no return. With one of her Reapers deranged beyond reason, and the other permanently altered, October isn't sure how she'll be able to keep up with the famine that's run rampant throughout Terraway. With too many souls to reap, October's body starts to break down as she struggles to redeem the world that seems set on her destruction.

St. Marina was from Antioch, a young girl with a passion so fierce for the Love of Christ, she denied all that was offered her for a life of wealth and power and continued to seek only the love that Jesus gives. She was hideously and brutally tortured in ways no human could indure but the Lord, who works miracles, led her through it all, with his Grace.

A true story about a private who becomes a subject of torture when it is revealed, through interrogation techniques, that the private once had contact with a UFO. The private is repeatedly victim to several different techniques of torture, over a short period of time. While his interrogators are extracting information, they disregard his health and well being in the process. Eventually, when the interrogations are concluded, the private is sent home with a lifetime of being totally disabled.

Los campos de concentración fueron la primera pata de un sistema represivo, un holocausto ideológico, que convirtió a toda España en una inmensa cárcel repleta de fosas. En ellos, presos políticos y prisioneros de guerra fueron asesinados, murieron de hambre y enfermedades, padecieron todo tipo de torturas y humillaciones.

Helga Schneider was four when her mother suddenly abandoned her family in Berlin in 1941. When she next saw her mother, 30 years later, she learned the shocking reason why. Her mother had joined the Nazi SS and had become a guard in the concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she was in charge of a "correction" unit and responsible for untold acts of torture.

In 1952, John T. “Jack” Downey, a 23-year-old CIA officer from Connecticut, was shot down over Manchuria during the Korean War. The pilots died in the crash, but Downey and his partner Richard “Dick” Fecteau were captured by the Chinese. For the next 20 years, they were harshly interrogated, put through show trials, held in solitary confinement, placed in reeducation camps, and toured around China as political pawns.