Terrorism, torture and intelligence

Despite the attention paid to the issues raised by torture and interrogation since 2001, there remains scope for greater understanding of these practices. Interrogation is often discussed with little reference to the complex realities of interrogation and the intelligence machine that it belongs to. This article seeks to draw attention to the value of injecting greater knowledge and understanding of intelligence practices into the torture debate. It does so by highlighting what the available literature on intelligence has to offer and by drawing upon what is publicly known about the interrogation of terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This example demonstrates the complexities of the issues faced by a range of practitioners today, serving as an important reminder that in order to be relevant to practice, scholarly discussions can benefit from drawing upon the available evidence on the practice of interrogation and its place relative to wider intelligence activities