Music Torture has been officially and publicly confirmed by government officials, human rights organizations, prison guards and interrogators, as well as suspected terrorists who have been detained in military prisons and detention centers. The United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights have banned the use of loud music in interrogations.
The United States Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency has made extensive use of sonic interrogation techniques, ie. torture by music, in facilities like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Kandahar, Bagram Detention Center and numerous “black sites” scattered around the globe. Such Interrogation techniques, combined with sleep deprivation, hard treatment, water-boarding, air deprivation and other notorious forms of torture, has been legalized under special provision of the United States Department of Justice and the White House under both the Bush and Obama administrations and continues to be used today.
The actual music used in TORTURE CLASSICS has been reported by both prison guards and released inmates (Binyam Mohamed and Donald Vance, tortured with music for 76 days) and includes Top 40 hits, Metal, Hard Rock, Country and Western, TV theme-songs and commercial jingles, as well as original “mash-ups” created by CIA agents, prison administrators, guards and interrogators.
Anonymous: “The Barney Song has a sound that was designed to make children feel safe and loved. But it was used to torture people and to drive them to their emotional breaking point. Music publisher Jive Records changed Britney Spears song title from “Hit me Baby One More Time” to “… Baby One More Time” to get rid of the ambiguous undercurrent to the catchy pop smash hit”.
Sgt. Mark Hadsell: “If you play the same song for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down, and your will is broken. That’s when we come in and talk to them”.
Guantanamo Prisoner Ruhal Ahmed: “I can bear being beaten up, it’s not a problem. Once you accept that you’re going to go into the interrogation room and be beaten up, it’s fine. You can prepare yourself mentally. But when you’re being psychologically tortured, you can’t. From the end of 2003 they introduced the music, and it became even worse. Before that, you could try and focus on something else. It makes you feel like you are going mad. You lose the plot. And it’s very scary to think that you might go crazy because of all the music, because of the loud noise, and because after a while you don’t hear the lyrics at all, all you hear is heavy banging.
