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Interview: The rise of 'clean' torture

By Michael Bond

20 February 2008

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

(Image: David Emmitte)

After a career studying how and why people torture prisoners, Darius Rejali says he is left with a “deep, haunted feeling”. He tells Michael Bond how torture is thriving in modern democracies, and how the rise of human rights monitoring has forced interrogators to refine their techniques to make it harder to spot.

You grew up in Iran. Was torture common there?

Iran has a long history of torture. It was never discussed, but everybody knew it happened. The Shah wanted people to know that bad things would happen to them if they opposed him. My father…

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