elizabeth tsurkov wurde im märz 2023 in bagdad entführt wurde und nach 903 tagen haft und folter frei­ge­las­sen. im atlantic schreibt sie über diese zeit.

I had no interest in “resisting” in­ter­ro­ga­ti­on under torture—after all, I had nothing real to hide, nothing I would not want to confess. So I freely admitted to whatever they seemed to want to hear: that I worked for the CIA and was a Mossad spy. To be both, of course, was hardly possible, but as these men beat me again and again over the next 14 weeks, I learned their bizarre con­spi­ra­cy theories—and tried to match my fables to theirs.

As my ex­pe­ri­ence showed, a heavy reliance on physical abuse makes for pro­fi­ci­ent torturers, not skilled in­ter­ro­ga­tors. Again and again, torture has proved to produce false con­fes­si­ons and bad in­tel­li­gence. The only knowledge that torture provides is the ultimate con­fir­ma­ti­on bias: in­for­ma­ti­on about the threats facing the regime that is entirely in line with the worldview of the torturers, who cha­rac­te­risti­cal­ly share the regime’s ge­ne­ra­li­zed paranoia.