Let’s be realistic about torture

Torture is, unequivocally, bad news. It inflicts lasting physical and mental damage. It dehumanises the victim, and also the torturer. It stiffens enemy resolve. It is illegal under 'international law'. And the use of torture, as Philippe Sands QC discusses in his new book, The Torture Team, is rot in the very roots of a democratic nation.

What's more, information gathered is often dubious. Some suspects hold out; some will say anything. In short, torture doesn't work.

Except that it does. Sometimes.

With characteristic forthrightness, the French used torture to win the battle for Algiers in 1957. In the mid-1960s, the British tortured insurgents in Aden, in the process uncovering arms caches and arresting terrorists. Even now former US Defence Intelligence Agency staff are on record (in Sands's book, no less) as saying that

threatening to throw someone off a roof can yield results.

Any moral justification for torture is, of course, highly dependent on its efficacy. (After all, torture has a long enough history to suggest it might have been known to serve its purpose on occasion.) So sensitive souls are hugely consoled by the simplistic mantra that torture 'doesn't work': it saves them from confronting reality.

In 'intelligence wars' - ­ where information is paramount and the enemy hides among civilians - torture is inevitable. There is no nation, however democratic, that will not resort to it. But because the political repercussions of torture so increase the risk of winning the battle (Algiers in 1957) and losing the war (Algeria gained independence in 1962), its use must be strictly limited.

Torture is a short-term option, only for use in the most extreme circumstances. Furthermore, it must be reserved as a police method of interrogation; once it becomes a military tactic the war is already lost.

The head of French intelligence in