Conservative MP Bob Stewart sparked a row today by insisting torture may be “justified” in some cases to stop a mass killing by terrorists.
The Beckenham MP, who served as a colonel in the Balkans conflict, told BBC 5 Live radio: “We don’t like torture. No one likes torture. Not even Trump likes torture.
“But the fact of the matter is ... sometimes it might work, and sometimes it might be justified.”
The Gestapo had used it to obtain details of British agents during the Second World War, he added, as an example of how it could work to gain secret information. He later insisted he was not referring to techniques like waterboarding, which he branded “horrid”.
But he added: “When you argue that torture never works, that is wrong. Torture can work and sometimes one has to wonder whether we might have to use hard persuasion, what I mean is minor torture, to get information to save a great number of lives.”
Pressed on what this could include, he added: “Sleep deprivation. Lack of food. Perhaps, as I’ve done, showing people pictures of their friends that have been blown up. That sort of thing.”
He added that if judged through “the lens of today’s justice system, he could be technically... a kind of torturer” for some of his actions in the Army in Ulster in the Seventies. He said he had “hooded” and “spread-eagled” detainees, techniques now regarded as illegal but permitted then.
