PETER HITCHENS: My late brother agreed to be waterboarded to see what it was like. He would have been appalled by how we’ve become so inured to torture as seen with Moscow terror suspects

Are we no longer disgusted or shocked by torture? I am amazed at how little protest or complaint there has been against the obvious, abhorrent brutality that Vladimir Putin’s state has unleashed against the alleged perpetrators of the March 22 terrorist attack.

The outrage left at least 139 people dead and 180 others injured at the Crocus City concert hall near Moscow.

On Sunday evening, the four alleged terrorists were paraded before TV cameras in a Moscow courtroom. They were clearly dealt with severely. One had a bandage roughly thrown over his ear, or where his ear had been. Another was in a wheelchair. One of his eyes may have been missing. He was dressed in a hospital gown, which was open and showed a catheter.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why they looked like that. Videos of them being tortured had somehow reached ‘social media’.

The New York Times explained: “One of the most disturbing videos showed a defendant… having part of his ear cut off and stuffed into his mouth. A photo circulating online showed a battery connected to another person’s genitals… while he was being restrained.”

There are far worse details available, for those who want to know them. I don’t recommend looking for it.

The purpose of all this is clear. To deter future terrorist attacks and assuage the anger of the Russian people, among whom emotions are understandably high.

But some Russians still realize they have gone too far. Putin’s personal spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, a member of Moscow’s educated elite, declined to comment on the torture. He must now realize without any doubt what kind of regime he is speaking for, and what it is capable of.

We in the West certainly still feel that we must be above these kinds of atrocities. Confessions should not be extracted by torture. Trials must be fair.

So why hold back, as we seem to be doing, when Russia breaks the rules in this horribly boastful way? The Russian Federation is now openly a lawless torture state, publicly and shamelessly operating outside the moral boundaries we normally impose on governments.

President Putin is already widely and rightly portrayed as a sinister tyrant, my own preferred term for him. Russia’s brief attempt to become a liberal democracy is clearly over.

Western people generally do not hesitate to denounce the Kremlin’s behavior on most other matters. But in this blood-stained boast, she has gone far beyond the bounds of what is permissible and is proud of what she has done.

But why aren’t we more shocked? Are we also happy to abandon our civilization because we are angry just when we need it most?

I well remember the national outpouring of anger at the time against (for example) the 1974 IRA pub bombings in Birmingham. There was a burning desire to see the perpetrators found and punished, with many openly denouncing the relatively recent abolition of the regretted hanging.

It is a shame that in several cases the suspects, whose convictions were later overturned, were subjected to significant abuse while in custody. This was shocking and wrong. But at least the British government did not deliberately expose the beaten men to TV cameras at the time.

On the contrary, they tried to cover up these events, whatever they could do in a country that at the time prided itself on its supposedly civilized police and fair trials.

Since then we have been seduced by TV thriller series such as 24, in which American special agent Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland) repeatedly advocated torture in practice.

In 2014, a report by Amnesty International UK concluded that more people in Britain found torture acceptable than in Russia – partly thanks to 24 and other popular TV shows such as Homeland and our own homegrown Spooks.

Does this explain why, while one might have expected a storm of Western disgust at the harrowing reports about the treatment of the Moscow suspects, there has not really been a storm of Western disgust? There should be.

I think this is because after the massacre of September 11, 2001, centuries of civilized restraint were cast aside in a red mist of anger that has still not lifted.

I also think this behavior was a mistake, both practically and morally. Torture doesn’t work, and if you too have torture chambers, what exactly are you defending when you wage war against despots?

Yet after September 11, memos circulated at high levels in Washington that timidly authorized “enhanced interrogations,” including waterboarding. This is essentially intentional drowning – not simulated, but actual. In 2008, my late brother Christopher, who was generally sympathetic to the Iraq war and on good terms with members of George W. Bush’s administration, became concerned about such methods.

He courageously volunteered to be waterboarded. His description can still be found on the Internet and I recommend it to everyone. It is characteristically witty and also very graphic.

The actual moment was ‘as if a huge, wet paw were suddenly and devastatingly clamped over my face. Unable to tell whether I was breathing in or out, and more overwhelmed by sheer panic than just water, I activated the prearranged signal and felt the incredible relief of being pulled upright and the sodden and suffocating layers of me were pulled off.’

His conclusion? “If waterboarding is not torture, then there is no such thing as torture.”

People will say anything to make this stop, and of course they do. For those tempted by the “ticking time bomb” argument for torture — that a suspect can be mutilated to give away important information that could prevent violent action — he cited advice from Malcolm Nance, a U.S. Navy veteran and a leading counter-terrorism expert.

He said: ‘Once you ask the infamous ‘ticking bomb’ question, and assuming you’re right, what aren’t you going to do? Waterboarding does not produce results quickly enough? Is the terrorist clock still ticking? Well, bring the thumbscrews and the pliers and the electrodes and the rack.’

Another staunch opponent of torture was the late Senator John McCain, a former US Navy pilot who was horribly abused by the North Vietnamese after being shot down and captured. Even as he died, in the late summer of 2018, he steadfastly opposed then-President Donald Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel to head the CIA.

Mr. Trump, who believes torture works, eventually appointed Ms. Haspel, who had worked at one of the CIA’s infamous “black sites” in Thailand. US media have reported that she took part in the agency’s “extraordinary rendition programme”, in which captured militants were handed over to foreign governments and held in secret facilities, where they were tortured by CIA personnel.

And this is our side in the great war for civilization. How did it come to this? England formally abolished torture in 1640. It was cruel and it didn’t work. You can choose your reason for opposing it, moral or practical, but I really think we need to protest more loudly against an abomination that is unspeakably vile to those who endure it, and that corrupts and scars those who inflict it.