Preventing Torture

In “Some Torture a Needed Life-Saving Tool”, Mirko Bagaric claims that torture is sometimes necessary to keep innocent people from being killed (and even includes a degree of ad hominem in proclaiming that opponents of torture either “lack compassion or have a warped moral compass”). Near the end of the piece he entertains possible counterarguments, including one that we can never be positive that the suspect even has the information we are trying to obtain, such as in the El-Masri case mentioned in Maher Arar’s article, in which the wrong person was captured and tortured for five months. Bagaric responds by saying that in that case, torture should not be used, and compares it to not shooting someone in self-defense until it is definitely known that they have malicious intentions. Here Bagaric seems to contradict himself, since if we should not torture someone unless we are sure they have relevant information, and we can never be entirely sure that a suspect has relevant information (Bagaric himself uses the word “never”), then it could be concluded that we should never torture. Suspecting someone of knowing something cannot be proven the same way a court of law can prove that a person performed an action. The mind is ambiguous enough that one cannot be completely certain that someone else knows something, and at least not certain enough to allow the assumption that torturing that person will definitely protect innocent lives.