THE TORTURE OF SUSPECTED PEOPLE AS A FORM OF COLLECTING INFORMATION

Pridobivanje podatkov je temeljna funkcija obveščevalnih služb. Podatke pridobivajo na različne načine in z različnimi metodami, kot so zbiranje podatkov s pomočjo človeških virov (HUMINT), s tehničnimi sredstvi (SIGINT), iz javno dostopnih virov (OSINT) in s pomočjo mednarodnega sodelovanja. Včasih uporabljajo tudi manj humane metode, kot je mučenje ljudi, ki je bilo značilno predvsem za nekdanje politične policije. Po terorističnem napadu 11. septembra 2001 so mučenje kot metodo pridobivanja podatkov začele uporabljati tudi ZDA. V različnih državah po svetu so ustanovile tajne zapore, v katerih so domnevne teroriste izpostavile različnim metodam mučenja. Najbolj odmevni so bili zapori, ki so se nahajali v Iraku (Abu Ghraib), Afganistanu (Bagram) in na Kubi (Guantanamo). Kasneje so odkrili še tajne zapore v Evropi, natančneje na Poljskem in v Romuniji. Z nezakonitimi aretacijami in zapiranjem domnevnih teroristov, ki so jih v tajnih zaporih mučili in poniževali, so ZDA kršile Ženevske konvencije o ravnanju s civilisti in vojnimi ujetniki. Čeprav so bili zapori pod nadzorom ameriške vojske, je pomembno vlogo pri mučenju osumljencev imela tudi CIA.Information gathering is the fundamental purpose of intelligence agencies. The information is gathered in various ways using a wide variety of methods such as human sources (HUMINT), technical sources (SIGINT), publicly available sources (OSINT) and international cooperation. Sometimes they make use of less humane methods such as torture which was typical for former political police forces. After the terrorist attacks on 9th November 2001 torture as a method of gathering information has become used also by the US. The US had established a number of prisons all around the world where suspected terrorists were tortured in many ways. The most well known are the prisons located in Iraq (Abu Ghraib), Afghanistan (Bagram) and Cuba (Guantanamo). Later two more prisons were discovered, one in Poland and one in Romania. By illegal arrests and incarceration of terror suspects and usage of torture the US has violated fundamental human rights. These acts violate the Geneva conventions, to which the US is a signatory, on treatment of civilians and prisoners of war. Even though the prisons were under the control of the US Army the CIA played a significant part