INTERROGATION Log of Detainee 063 (Day 25, December 17, 2002): “Detainee did not appreciate being called a homosexual. He also appeared annoyed by the issue of his mother and sister as examples of prostitutes and ….”

Day 50: “Source received haircut… Detainee stated he would talk about anything if his beard was left alone. Beard was shaven … detainee began to cry when talking ….”

These entries from an interrogation log maintained at the US base housing detainees in Guantanamo Bay were published by the Guardian on April 19. Taken from Philippe Sands’ recent book Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law, they give us a raw insight into how laws and common decency were eroded time and again.

The post-9/11 period has witnessed many examples of man’s inhumanity to man, and few more so than what has gone on at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo, the detention camp at Abu Ghraib and the American base in Kandahar. These bestial acts have been mirrored by beheadings and suicide bombings carried out by terrorists.

One would have expected the perpetrators of these crimes to be brutalised, savage human beings. But in videos and letters left behind by suicide bombers, they come across as perfectly normal, even sensitive people. Similarly, whenever American and British soldiers have been brought to trial for their actions, character witnesses for the defence have repeatedly said they were perfectly normal young men and women. So what happens to normal people to push them into committing such loathsome acts?

To try and fathom how ordinary people behaved when given authority over others, Professor Philip Zimbardo conducted what is now famous as the Stanford experiment. In the sixties, he and his colleagues set up a ‘county prison’ near the Stanford University campus and called for 20 volunteers who would each be paid $20 a day.

They were divided into two groups of 10 young men in each, with one group being made guards with appropriate uniforms, and the other being the prisoners. Describing the experiment in a chilling recent book called The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo notes that initially, he had trouble getting volunteers to agree to be guards as they thought the prisoners would have an easier time.

The experiment was conducted in a converted storage space, and the actors were under secret surveillance, with their words and actions recorded by Zimbardo and his colleagues. In the early period of the role-playing, there was the usual banter, but the ‘guards’ were told they were being too soft. Soon, their attitude began to change. They formulated a set of rules, and punishments for infringements were laid down.

Unable to believe they were being pushed around by their friends, the ‘prisoners’ began to test the limits, and were subjected to punishments ranging from withdrawal of food, denial of exercise, and, finally, stints in a tiny ‘solitary confinement’ cell. Within a few days, the ‘prisoners’ staged a mini-riot that was brutally put down. Some ‘guards’ began to compete to see who could be tougher with their ‘prisoners’, while the latter became more defiant.

The situation soon deteriorated to the point where Zimbardo began to fear for the safety of the volunteers. He and his colleagues decided to terminate the experiment within a week, while it had originally been scheduled to run for a fortnight. One of the conclusions Zimbardo derived from his observations was that under the right circumstances, almost anybody could commit the most outrageous acts without any moral qualms.

Given legal authority, it appears that human beings are capable of the most terrible crimes without questioning their orders. Official uniforms and the presence of peers and superiors within a hierarchy erode years of teaching about right and wrong. Thus, guards at Abu Ghraib never questioned their actions as they thought they had the approval of their superiors. In actual fact, they did, but as soon as the reality behind the walls became public, the guards were left to face the music while the officers were rapped lightly on the knuckles.

The findings at Stanford were confirmed through another experiment in which volunteers were placed at a control that permitted them to seemingly increase the current flowing into the metal restraints placed on other volunteers they could see, but not hear. In fact, the latter were actors who pretended to be in agony while the ‘current’ was flowing into them. The point was that those at the controls went on increasing the pain when told to do so by the staff members next to them. Invariably, they went to the maximum when instructed.

These experiments reveal the dark side of the human psyche. In everyday life, we can observe how perfectly normal people are transformed as soon as they put on a uniform. Recently, the British press has carried a spate of stories alleging that our ISI had tortured suspects with the connivance, or at the behest, of MI5, the internal security agency charged with preventing terrorism in the UK. Details of the torture were gruesome; allegedly, the torturers were serving army officers seconded to the ISI. In all probability, they were perfectly ordinary young men under the spell of the ‘Lucifer effect’.

Another thing Zimbardo postulates is that people need to have strong characters to resist the pressure to conform, and go along with others as they follow orders and commit crimes against humanity. The majority, however, succumb.

In the Nuremburg trials following the Second World War, most of the Nazis in the dock pleaded ‘not guilty’ on the grounds that they were simply following orders. The judges, while dismissing this plea, were of the view that as responsible human beings, they were not supposed to follow orders that were clearly illegal.

Unfortunately, most people are too unsure and weak to take a stand against those in power. Considerations of career, and loss of power and prestige, block the clear dictates of morality and decency. Time and again, when individuals are tried for mistreating others, they fall back on the ‘Nuremburg defence’.

But until atrocities such as the ones we have been witnessing are highlighted, and their perpetrators punished, the Lucifer effect will continue to plague us. At least a few of the American and British soldiers accused of torture have been tried and sentenced. We have still to try any of those responsible for the atrocities committed in East Pakistan in 1971.