Torture, in a legal sense, means the application of bodily pain so as to force evidence from witnesses, or confessions from persons accused of crimes. It was applied to slaves in Athens and the Athenian and Rhodian laws allowed it to be applied even to citizens and freemen. In popular terms, torture is also the infliction of pain as a punishment. Torture is simultaneously universally condemned and practised. In Norway following the Second World War during the late 1940s and 1950s the children of unmarried Norwegian mothers and German soldiers were forcibly detained in mental institutions, one survivor recounting how she was forced to sleep in a straight jacket every night for three years. Following the American war against Afghanistan in 2001, the subsequent prisoners of war were held shackled, in small cages and in 2005 the USA was scandalised by the revelation that the American government operated secret prison camps around the world where 'suspects' - many of them kidnapped - were taken and tortured, contrary to American and international law. Research Torture
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Research Torture