Flutterby™! : why torture doesn't work

Yet another reason why overly coercive interrogation techniques don't work. I saw this flying around a few sites yesterday and couldn't figure the right things to say about it, but the damned tabs are still up in my browser, so I'll copy most of the links out of the MeFi entry and summarize: As CNN reports, Abdallah Higazy had just started a computer engineering graduate program at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. The school didn't have housing yet, so they put him up at the Millenium Hotel, across the street from the World Trade Center. The September 11^th 2001 attacks happened, he evacuated. When he went back to get his stuff, the hotel security guard had found a handheld transceiver that had air traffic communications frequency capabilities in his room (and lied about where he'd found it). The FBI arrested him, interrogated him, and after initially denying that the radio was his, he eventually confessed to owning the radio. He was charged with lying to federal agents.

Three days after the charges were made public, a pilot who'd stayed at the hotel previously came back to claim his radio. Higazy, thus vindicated, sued.

Steve Bergstein explains the rest, but a redacted Second Circuit court opinion (mirrored locally) was diffed with the new culled opinion, and the difference shows that Higazy's interrogation included credible threats of torture to his family back in Egypt.