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Torture and Democracy Darius Rejali Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007 (xxiii + 849 pages, bibliography, index) $39.50 (cloth)
Darius Rejali was a torture expert long before September 11, 2001. His expertise has become encyclopedic, as evident in his masterful new book, Torture and Democracy. His knowledge about the history of torture techniques, including their origins, uses, and transmissions around the world, is unparalleled: He is one of the foremost experts on what he terms "stealth" techniques, those methods and practices that were developed to leave no marks. In an era when the United States officially sanctions and relies on torture in waging its "war on terror," the book is intended not only to inform readers about these tactics, but also to change public debate and, ultimately, help end the use of torture.
Rejali's expertise has real-world applications. In 2007, several U.S. military lawyers assigned to defend the first prisoners charged for trial in the military commissions that the Bush administration has created traveled to Reed College in Oregon, where Rejali is a professor of political science, to consult with him for several days. The military lawyers were interested in the role that social scientists and doctors can play in identifying torture and evaluating its effects on prisoners and on testimony in order to reinforce their knowledge that American interrogation tactics include torture, and that tortured evidence is inherently unreliable. Civilian lawyers representing Abdul Rahim al-Jancko had a similar goal in consulting Rejali. The sole evidence justifying al-Jancko's detention at Guantánamo Bay was a confession videotaped in the 1990s for the Taliban, claiming he had become a member of al-Qa'ida. He said the confession was false, and coerced, because he had been subjected to electroshock and falaka (beating the soles of feet). Rejali, with his extensive knowledge of torture instruments and the symptoms they produce, including the electroshock-falaka combination, was able to corroborate that the kind of electrical instrument al-Jancko described was typically used by the Taliban,...