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Debate has been intense about whether humiliating and terror-inducing techniques are torture as prohibited by international agreements. To determine the consequences of mental and physical tortures, investigators from England and Serbia interviewed 279 soldiers, refugees, and civilian detainees who had been tortured during the Balkan conflicts.
Most subjects had experienced physical torture, and all had experienced mental torture. They were grouped according to type of their experiences: nonphysical torture only; nonphysical torture plus beatings; or nonphysical torture, beatings, plus other physical tortures.
Interviewees rated several psychological methods as distressing as physical torture. Subjective severity (level of distress and helple…