The Ratio

A clinical instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School provides insight into Porters Goss' creative redefinition of shaking as "aggressive interrogation" rather than torture:

When this kind of violent shaking is done to babies, it can result in brain damage and death.

The same consequences can occur in adults. I interviewed and examined a dozen Palestinians who had been violently shaken while in Israeli custody. Many had personality, behavioral and cognitive changes consistent with frontal lobe brain damage. At least one man died in custody when violent shaking caused, as an autopsy revealed, tearing of the blood vessels under the skull and lethal intracranial bleeding.

In 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court deemed shaking to be torture and banned it. The effect of the court's ruling has been murky, but the judgment that shaking constitutes torture is inescapable.

Tags: Torture