Liberty Star
11-28-2007, 09:55 PM
If torured people are left alive, can they become monsters?
Lawrence Wright's Trip to al-Qaeda
Wright, unlike most Americans, has an intimate knowledge of the Middle East. He taught English in Egypt over three decades ago, learning Arabic and making life-long friends in the process. "The Egyptian people loved America then," he tells his audience. When Wright returned to Egypt in 2002 to research Ayman al-Zawahiri, the doctor and ideological leader of al-Qaeda, the yang to Osama bin Laden's charismatic (and moneyed) yin, he found it a changed place, electric with anger and bitterness.
In part, this anger stemmed from the tactics the Egyptian government had taken against Islamist radicals like Zawahiri. During the show, Wright presents a clip from the early 1980s: Zawarhiri had been convicted of smuggling guns used in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Behind bars, packed in with other inmates, the young surgeon is articulate, proud, and defiant: "They put us in the dirty Egyptian jails … they whipped with electric cables, they shocked us with electricity! ... And they used wild dogs!" "Torture," comments Wright, "is a potent deterrent. Indeed, many of these prisoners were psychologically destroyed. But Zawahiri emerged … hardened, resolute, and bent on revenge…. He entered prison a surgeon. He came out of it a butcher."
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=lawrence_wrights_trip_to_alqaeda
Lawrence Wright's Trip to al-Qaeda
Wright, unlike most Americans, has an intimate knowledge of the Middle East. He taught English in Egypt over three decades ago, learning Arabic and making life-long friends in the process. "The Egyptian people loved America then," he tells his audience. When Wright returned to Egypt in 2002 to research Ayman al-Zawahiri, the doctor and ideological leader of al-Qaeda, the yang to Osama bin Laden's charismatic (and moneyed) yin, he found it a changed place, electric with anger and bitterness.
In part, this anger stemmed from the tactics the Egyptian government had taken against Islamist radicals like Zawahiri. During the show, Wright presents a clip from the early 1980s: Zawarhiri had been convicted of smuggling guns used in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Behind bars, packed in with other inmates, the young surgeon is articulate, proud, and defiant: "They put us in the dirty Egyptian jails … they whipped with electric cables, they shocked us with electricity! ... And they used wild dogs!" "Torture," comments Wright, "is a potent deterrent. Indeed, many of these prisoners were psychologically destroyed. But Zawahiri emerged … hardened, resolute, and bent on revenge…. He entered prison a surgeon. He came out of it a butcher."
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=lawrence_wrights_trip_to_alqaeda