Historical Perspectives: Timeline of Torture
Ancient Rome: Torture is thought to give more validity to the confessions of slaves and other lower-class people.
12th century: The rise of political authority and discontent with the oaths, ordeals, and combats previously used to resolve legal conflicts contributes to the introduction of torture in Europe.
1252: Pope Innocent IV of the Roman Church allows the use of torture to extract confessions from perceived heretics.
13th century: Outside the Inquisition, torture becomes widely practiced throughout Europe but only when there is strong evidence against the subject.
mid-14th–18th century: Torture becomes a sanctioned part of judicial proceedings.
17th–18th century: The Enlightenment galvanizes greater moral debate about the use of torture and eventually confession makes way for circumstantial evidence and eye-witness accounts.
18th century: Torture is made illegal in most European countries.
1764: Publication in Italian of Cesare Beccaria's Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments), the first statement of principles regulating punishment. Beccaria also condemns secret judicial proceedings and capital punishment.
20th century: Political volatility of the modern state increases the use of torture by armies and intelligence agents, especially by totalitarian governments in Italy, Russia, and Germany.
1948: The United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights absolutely bans torture.
1949: The Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war is adopted, providing the rules of conduct in all conflicts, including the condemnation of torture. It is entered into force in 1950.
1966: The United States Supreme Court decides in favor of a suspect's Fifth Amendment right not to be coerced into self-incrimination in Miranda v. Arizona. Police officers are henceforth required to inform all suspects of their Miranda right to keep silent.
1960s: Social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducts an experiment on human obedience at Yale University in which volunteers administer dangerous amounts of electric shock to "victims" simply under the order of their "teachers."
1984: The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1984 and is entered into force in 1987.
1987: In Israel, the Landau decision allows "moderate physical pressure" in "ticking time-bomb" scenarios. Until 1999, when torture was outlawed under pressure from local human-rights groups and the UN, Israel was the only state in which torture or ill treatment was officially sanctioned.
1994: The United States signs the Convention Against Torture.
1989–99: According to Amnesty International's Report 2000, there is a "23 percent increase in countries using torture and a 58 percent increase in which 'disappearances' occurred."
1997–mid-2000: According to an Amnesty International report, state officials in more than 150 countries practice torture or ill treatment. In more than seventy, these practices are widespread or persistent. In more than eighty, people allegedly die as a result. In the same period, according to studies conducted by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, 20 to 30 percent of external refugees are torture survivors, with the total numbers being much higher since many displaced peoples do not leave their home countries.
August 2002: A private memo from the U.S. Justice Department changes the definition of torture in a time of war from "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering" (codified in Section 2340 (1) of the U.S. Code) to pain that is severe enough to be "excruciating and agonizing" or pain that is "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." This definition is revised by the Office of Legal Council in 2004.
September 2002: Maher Arar, a dual citizen of Syria and Canada, is deported to Syria while in transit at Kennedy airport, New York, for his purported link to Al Qaeda. He is on his way back to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia. In Syria he is detained without legal representation, tortured, then sent back to Canada in October 2003. This incident stirs public interest in the legality of what is known officially as "extraordinary rendition," which allows the extradition of suspects to countries that are known to use torture based on diplomatic assurances from that country that the suspect will not be tortured.
July 25, 2005: Iran formally confesses to using torture in prisons.
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