Torture - Does It Make US Safer? Is It Ever Ok?: A Human Rights Perspective

Of all the issues on the human rights agenda, torture offered Americans the moral highground...until this year. With the abuses at Abu Ghraib that led to accusations of torture within the domestic criminal justice system, the question of cruel and unusual treatment has taken on new urgency in the U.S. and now similar abuses by British soldiers are being uncovered. In "Torture", twelve newly-written essays by leading thinkers and experts range over history and continents, offering a nuanced, up-to-the-minute exploration of this wrenching but timely topic. Intended for a general audience, some of the key questions addressed include how to define torture, whether torture is ever effective, and whether it is ever acceptable.

Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. He has written articles on a range of human rights topics for the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and the International Herald Tribune, among other publications. Human Rights Watch has been defending human rights worldwide since 1978. Geoffrey Robertson is Head of Doughty Street Chambers and Recorder and Visiting Professor in Human Rights Law at Birkbeck College. Author of Crimes Against Humanity, Freedom, The Individual and the Law; Media Law; People Against the Press; Does Dracula Have Aids?; and a memoir, The Justice Game. He is married to the author Kathy Lette and they live in London with their two young children.