Torture: Then And Now

Following from last week's post of The Battle Of Algiers, there is an important article in the current issue of Race & Class. Entitled "Torture: from Algiers to Abu Ghraib", Neil Macmaster explicitly links the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the counter-insurgency techniques used by the French in Algeria. As Macmaster notes: "Yet while the lessons of the torturer have been assiduously learnt, what has been ignored is the recent open debate in France on the profound damage done by such institutionalised barbarity both to the victims and to the individuals and regimes that deploy it". And today there are reports of more allegations of the torture regime at Guantánamo Bay. Read the rest.