Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People is a riveting book that exposes the potential in each of us for acting unspeakably. John Conroy sits down with torturers from several nations and comes to understand their motivations. His compelling narrative has the tension of a novel. He takes us into a Chicago police station, two villages in the West Bank, and a secret British interrogation center in Northern Ireland, and in the process we are exposed to the experience of the victim, the rationalizations of the torturer, and the seeming indifference of the bystander. The torture occurs in democracies that ostensibly value justice, due process, and human rights, and yet the perpetrators and their superiors escape without punishment, revealing much about the dynamics of torture.
John Conroy is a staff writer for the Chicago Reader and the author of Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other publications.
Read an Excerpt
"And I think it was the first realization for me of how serious the ordeal was that I had been through, because the look that I saw on the screws' faces was one of sheer horror at my appearance. They were absolutely horrified. And the two of them grabbed me and helped me into a minibus and brought me around to the reception in Crumlin Road Jail. They fed me sweets, and they were running in and out of the cell for three-quarters of an hour, asking me did I want anything, giving me a packet of cigarettes, giving me a box of matches, and continually asking me did I want coffee or tea, until I was moved to D-wing, the basement, the holding cells. I was there overnight, but while I was there, other guys, whose voices I recognized, started talking through the bars, and I got up and I was talking through the bars with them, and I realized then that there were other people who had gone through the same process."
Table of Contents
Introduction 1 BELFAST: The Five Techniques 2 ISRAEL: Night of the Broken Clubs 3 CHICAGO: Getting Confessions 4 History and Method 5 BELFAST: "No Brutality of Any Kind" 6 ISRAEL: A Dangerous Report 7 CHICAGO: "The Pain Stays in Your Head" 8 Torturers 9 BELFAST: Ireland vs. the U.K. 10 ISRAEL: The Court-Martial 11 CHICAGO: Informants 12 Victims 13 BELFAST: Life Sentences 14 ISRAEL: "The Next Step Is to God" 15 CHICAGO: The Public Is Not Aroused 16 Bystanders Bibliographical Note Acknowledgments Index