A man was in the kitchen on what promised to be another relaxing night at home. He washed up and plopped on the living room couch next to his wife who wore a smile, perhaps glad to have her husband around after another hectic day at work; a typical scene repeated in households worldwide. In most stories, what follows next is another night’s sleep. Not many end with armed forces bursting through your door and dragging your husband away.

In our post 9/11 world, the word ‘torture’ has been overused up to the point that the shock factor at the mention of its happenings is almost non-existent. ‘Waterboarding’ is now a household term and, just like the Mexican drug wars, the proverbial starving children of Africa and what’s now a disturbingly all too common Middle Eastern civilian deaths, there is an information overload regarding government tortures that we are now numb to it.

Amnesty International’s new video titled Hooded lets us see what it’s like to be tortured. The viewer is given a first person view on the terrifying ordeals of being abducted and having your face covered with a hood, but the worse is yet to come. Coupled with the abductee’s growing sense of disorientation, he became subject to electro-shock and water boarding. The torture is portrayed so powerfully in this video with the intention of depicting the ordeal exactly the way the detainee would see it. Blinded, except for streams of light that penetrates through small holes in the hood, perhaps the only thing worse than the actual torture is not knowing what will happen next.

Amnesty International provided a description to accompany the video stating its purpose:

“Hooded is an exploration of visual and auditory senses to convey the horrific nature of torture. It combines extensive sound design with abstracted visuals to provide a disturbing experience. It is a powerful reminder that torture is barbaric and never justifiable.

This film has been made as part of Amnesty International’s Security with Human Rights campaign, which aims to end abuses of human rights which take place in the context of terrorism, countering terrorism and national security.”

Though many countries have prohibited torture in the past century, what is now labeled ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ has brought the issue back into the public eye, with some nations even practicing it openly. Amnesty International reported that torture is more prevalent in G-20 nations. Torturers are trained and most wouldn’t exist without government backings. The acceptance of using cruel treatment on anyone signifies a serious erosion to fundamental human rights, and though some argue that it’s a necessary tool in the ongoing war against terror, a four-decade study by the US Intelligence Science Board reported torture as being ineffective in obtaining reliable intelligence.

CIA Veteran, Bob Baer, admitted, “To be honest, in those situations (of interrogation) I really had no idea what I was doing.”

In plenty of cases, the victims who are subjected to these interrogation techniques are merely suspects with little to no evidences regarding their involvement in the crimes they were accused of. Such is the case with Maher Arar, a Canadian who was held for a year and tortured in Syria after the US authorities had relied on accurate information to detain him. Although Arar received compensations and a formal apology, no amount of either can compensate for the trauma and emotional scarring suffered by such torture victims.

Torture is the most widespread human rights crime in the world and we find ourselves in yet another situation where we are left to ponder: how can something so horrific be so prevalent? As a civilization that aims to move forward, this is one barbaric act that we can do without because as the video stresses: Nothing justifies this. Nothing makes it right.

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A decade after the tragic events of 9/11, the backwash of US effort to prevent any future terrorist attacks keeps turning up new revelations about questionable practices and unpleasant realities. Recently, a former Guantanamo inmate gave an interview to the BBC, describing some of the things he endured during his captivity between early 2002 and 2008. Saad Iqbal Madni was known as an Islamic scholar and prize-winning reciter of the Quran when he, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, was bundled into a plane during a visit to Indonesia and flown to Egypt. In Cairo, Egyptian intelligence agents were allegedly waiting to extract information under the auspice of US agents. “The place they put me was smaller than a grave,” Mr Madni told the BBC, “They asked me questions about [shoe bomber] Richard Reid, and if I had any information about 9/11. When I denied it, they gave me electric shocks in my knees. A few times I passed out.”

After Cairo, Mr. Madni explains he was taken to Bagram Air base in Afghanistan where they deprived him of food and kept him in isolation for 10 months. By March 2003, he was transferred to Guantanamo as classified as an enemy combatant. The main accusation was connections to al-Qaeda and planning terrorist acts – charges he denies.

During an interview with BBC’s Pakistan correspondent Orla Guerin, Mr Madni gave a detailed description of some of the traumatizing experiences he was forced to make while carrying the number 746 in Guantanamo Bay. “Since they arrest me, up to today, every second night I wake up screaming, yelling and crying,” he confessed, breaking into tears. “I can’t forget what they did to me. No one can do that with the animals. I don’t know how they can do that with human beings.”

Among other things, Mr Madni was exposed to a practice called ‘frequent flier status’. “That means the detainee is not allowed to sleep,” he said. “Every 20 minutes, every half an hour, the guards come and wake up the detainee, they handcuff him, they leg shackle him, and move him from block to block, cell to cell. If we try to get a nap the guards come and kick the doors, yelling, screaming and cursing.” The BBC report acknowledges that much of Mr. Madni’s chronicle of imprisonment cannot be independently verified, but his account echoes those of other former detainees.

Within the first year at Guantanamo, Mr Madni attempted suicide but his actions were punished with increased torture and intimidation. When contracting an ear infection, he claims that he was refused treatment and told to cooperate with interrogators if he wanted medical help. He cites doctors for telling him that he was an enemy, not a patient.

Mr Madni denies having links with extremists groups in Pakistan, though admits having met members of a hardline Indonesian Islamic group – the Islamic Defenders Front – with a scholarly purpose. He claims not to have known the US considered them terrorists. When asking the interrogation personnel about his status during the five years in Guantanamo, he explained “they just said that Washington D.C. need to keep you in here. When they decide to let you free then all the charges will be dropped”. True to word, a US court ordered his release in August 2008 where he returned to Pakistan.

However, the government of Pakistan has placed him under house arrest, listing him under the country’s anti-terror watch. “I am suffering more that I was in Guantanamo Bay,” he says, “I can’t work. I can’t see my family members. I can’t leave the city.” Mr Madni says the situation has left him suicidal. “Over there is a small cage,” he told the BBC, “and Pakistan is the bigger cage. That’s it.”

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