OHumanista
24th October 2011, 03:29
I am not sure this would be the right thread but here it goes(mods, feel free to move it somewhere else if you wish). It a real situation which my father lived but I won't mention names or anything that would compromise me. (not that I care mind you but I am following the rules here, I doubt even an expert on brazilian resistance movements could identify my father just by this). It is long but very interesting.(at least for me)
I felt it was a good thing to post here since you can actually learn some interesting things, specially a good strategy to deal with torture. (not that I think any of you are actually being persecuted right now...but we never know when/if it may happen):p
Starting...
My father was a member of a group of agitators during the military dictatorship era of Brasil. He became one of the major "leaders" of the movement in São Paulo. At that time he worked first on a bank where he was fired because of his politics and later worked in factories using pseudonyms. He also used the work to spread a socialist newspaper, hand out marxist books and help organise strikes and trade unions. He often moved around to avoid suspicion.
One day he was going to meet an old friend that was in the armed resistance.(which my father didn't join since the people were still STRONGLY apathetic and often denounced the position of the militias because they saw them as terrorists - the media convinced them of that of course).
They had a code for the meeting. They would pass by pretending they didn't know each other. If everything was clean they would both scratch one of their eyebrows, turn back and talk. If one of them did not it would warn the other that the meeting was a trap by the military.(who had presumably captured one of them)
On that day my father's friend didn't make the sign.:pAnd his heart started pounding.
My father pretended he didn't know it was a trap and kept walking, moving into a supermarket. Before entering he saw a suspicious black van around the street.(every leftist knew they used black vans to make people "disappear")
Once inside he proceeded to back exit of the market hoping he could escape by mixing with a crowd on the more agitated street on the other side. But immediately after he opened the back door he saw a black van parked just in front of it and they got him before he could run back. They placed a black bag over his head, beat him badly and threw him on the van.
They only removed the bag on his head when he had arrived to a dirty humid dark cell on the basement of a political police department. Three other people were already there on the same cell. Two, a man and a woman had gone mad, one barely moving and the other hugging the wall like a frightned child. And the other was still sane but bleeding badly, with no fingernails and multiple cuts and mutilations.
All of them had to sleep on the cold and intentionally wet floor and do their needs on a small bucket. All the while screams could be heard from the distance and every time a prisoner came back they took a new one was taken to the torture rooms. Sleep was impossible with combination of all of these things and a guard often kicked prisoners who managed to sleep despite the circunstances. By the second day he already had a cold, and long time prisoners often got pneumonia, though they military tried to make sure they wouldn't die.
Then the "interrogation" began.
First they put my father's friend in front of him, both sitted on small chairs looking to each other. They revealed that he was already there for months and after much "bravado" and struggling and telling them that he wouldn't say a thing they had finally broken him. And that is how the meeting happened, he had not only been broken but used as a bait.
Then they asked the guy to tell everything he knew about dad to them. And he told (as he had probably already told them separately before. But every single time the guy started going in depth my father pretended to be angry at him and screamed something like.
"YOU LYING BASTARD! YOU ARE ONLY SAYING THIS BECAUSE YOU HATE ME! YOU ALWAYS DID! YOU ARE JEALOUS BECAUSE YOUR SISTER LIKES ME!" and things like that.(all the while being consistent)
Every time he screamed that he lunged forward pretending to attack his friend. He knew of course that he wouldn't need to as the torturers intervened and beat him badly all times but he didn't stop. He did this so many times that they eventually gave up deciding they wouldn't get anywhere with that.
So they spent the next two days torturing him and asking for the basics, like his name, the name of his organisation and etc. He didn't lie a single time, since he knew they were well aware of these facts. Then they asked him about his address (to investigate his house) and he offered himself to accompany them.(because he had a plan)
They took him there. His dog barked at the guards accompaning them and because of that they shoot it in the head killing it. Once inside the house they arrested his wife(not my mother, a previous wife who is a terrible person but didn't deserve what happened, no one does) and a cousin of his that was unfortunately visiting the house at the time. Then they started a search for "subversive" materials(like Marx).
But my father had already hid all his leftist books before the meeting in a hole beneath some loose tiles in the kitchen just in case such a thing happened. Still he looked over a table and noticed he had forgotten a copy of the Capital in his table. He used the distraction of the guards to place it on the back of his pants.
After finding nothing they returned to the car that took them there. Once they started driving back my father slid the book between the backseat.(and they never found it in time to use it against him :laugh:) Also because of the loud hum of cars at that time dad managed to whisper the story they were supposed to tell to the military when interrogated(he had already told his wife before being arrested but not his cousin, as he didn't imagine she would be there, modern times ruin this idea :(:D)
Back in their HQ: They raped both his wife and his cousin and tortured them. And then started asking him to indentify "subversives" in an album of people they were watching and say where he had seen them. And once again instead of playing the revolutionary macho and telling them to screw themselves he pretended to cooperate and to just be a scared newbie to the movement. He pointed out all obvious persons any idiot would know and told he had seen them in only in some public and widely known events. They kept torturing him over the days but he kept confirming only these.
There was also the "good" cop, bad cop game were after being tortured a "noble" soldier went in to look after his wounds and start a friendly conversation. Where he tried to gain my father's sympathy and convince him that the movement leaders were just using him as a pawn against the good government and that he understood his sufferment and regreted it.(my father also discovered in his cell that his "good" cop was actually the bad cop of the other guy in his cell). All the while my father pretended to have believed in him and released more useless and widely known information to him.
His relatives only confirmed every he said when pressioned because he had already told them what to tell.
And with all of these "tactics" my father and his relatives were released on the 10th day after being captured. He was still kept under watch but considered mostly as a "harmless newbie" by the military.(when in fact he had been one the key persons in many of the things that had happened).
And 10 days were wonderful when compared to the others who in the vast majority spent weeks or months until they were broken. Their error was having no plan at all. Not only admiting being well informed communists but also offending the torturers and refusing to speak a single thing. These were obviously deemed as dedicated militants by the torturers and would never be released until they were broken, and sooner or later all of them either spilled the bean or went insane from the torment.
Also my father quickly warned some comrades once he got out that he had been released and this saved the lives of a group that was planning to invade the prison to release him. Most of them armed with primitive weapons and untrained, even if it had worked it would have cost the lives of many workers to save a single one.(and would have sent a red alert to the military, he would be forever marked as a very important person to recapture)
After all of that he destroyed or hid anything that could incriminate him and took a train to Argentina thus beggining his exile.
Whew...done, feel free to comment, and I know it is VERY long. :D
Bottom line: Keep cool and play dumb (as cool as you can be while being eletrecuted, having your nails removed, whipped, flayed, beaten, broken bones, no sleep, cold, pneumonia, seeing your female relatives get raped, seeing a friend in a broken state of both mind and body and little bit more)
I felt it was a good thing to post here since you can actually learn some interesting things, specially a good strategy to deal with torture. (not that I think any of you are actually being persecuted right now...but we never know when/if it may happen):p
Starting...
My father was a member of a group of agitators during the military dictatorship era of Brasil. He became one of the major "leaders" of the movement in São Paulo. At that time he worked first on a bank where he was fired because of his politics and later worked in factories using pseudonyms. He also used the work to spread a socialist newspaper, hand out marxist books and help organise strikes and trade unions. He often moved around to avoid suspicion.
One day he was going to meet an old friend that was in the armed resistance.(which my father didn't join since the people were still STRONGLY apathetic and often denounced the position of the militias because they saw them as terrorists - the media convinced them of that of course).
They had a code for the meeting. They would pass by pretending they didn't know each other. If everything was clean they would both scratch one of their eyebrows, turn back and talk. If one of them did not it would warn the other that the meeting was a trap by the military.(who had presumably captured one of them)
On that day my father's friend didn't make the sign.:pAnd his heart started pounding.
My father pretended he didn't know it was a trap and kept walking, moving into a supermarket. Before entering he saw a suspicious black van around the street.(every leftist knew they used black vans to make people "disappear")
Once inside he proceeded to back exit of the market hoping he could escape by mixing with a crowd on the more agitated street on the other side. But immediately after he opened the back door he saw a black van parked just in front of it and they got him before he could run back. They placed a black bag over his head, beat him badly and threw him on the van.
They only removed the bag on his head when he had arrived to a dirty humid dark cell on the basement of a political police department. Three other people were already there on the same cell. Two, a man and a woman had gone mad, one barely moving and the other hugging the wall like a frightned child. And the other was still sane but bleeding badly, with no fingernails and multiple cuts and mutilations.
All of them had to sleep on the cold and intentionally wet floor and do their needs on a small bucket. All the while screams could be heard from the distance and every time a prisoner came back they took a new one was taken to the torture rooms. Sleep was impossible with combination of all of these things and a guard often kicked prisoners who managed to sleep despite the circunstances. By the second day he already had a cold, and long time prisoners often got pneumonia, though they military tried to make sure they wouldn't die.
Then the "interrogation" began.
First they put my father's friend in front of him, both sitted on small chairs looking to each other. They revealed that he was already there for months and after much "bravado" and struggling and telling them that he wouldn't say a thing they had finally broken him. And that is how the meeting happened, he had not only been broken but used as a bait.
Then they asked the guy to tell everything he knew about dad to them. And he told (as he had probably already told them separately before. But every single time the guy started going in depth my father pretended to be angry at him and screamed something like.
"YOU LYING BASTARD! YOU ARE ONLY SAYING THIS BECAUSE YOU HATE ME! YOU ALWAYS DID! YOU ARE JEALOUS BECAUSE YOUR SISTER LIKES ME!" and things like that.(all the while being consistent)
Every time he screamed that he lunged forward pretending to attack his friend. He knew of course that he wouldn't need to as the torturers intervened and beat him badly all times but he didn't stop. He did this so many times that they eventually gave up deciding they wouldn't get anywhere with that.
So they spent the next two days torturing him and asking for the basics, like his name, the name of his organisation and etc. He didn't lie a single time, since he knew they were well aware of these facts. Then they asked him about his address (to investigate his house) and he offered himself to accompany them.(because he had a plan)
They took him there. His dog barked at the guards accompaning them and because of that they shoot it in the head killing it. Once inside the house they arrested his wife(not my mother, a previous wife who is a terrible person but didn't deserve what happened, no one does) and a cousin of his that was unfortunately visiting the house at the time. Then they started a search for "subversive" materials(like Marx).
But my father had already hid all his leftist books before the meeting in a hole beneath some loose tiles in the kitchen just in case such a thing happened. Still he looked over a table and noticed he had forgotten a copy of the Capital in his table. He used the distraction of the guards to place it on the back of his pants.
After finding nothing they returned to the car that took them there. Once they started driving back my father slid the book between the backseat.(and they never found it in time to use it against him :laugh:) Also because of the loud hum of cars at that time dad managed to whisper the story they were supposed to tell to the military when interrogated(he had already told his wife before being arrested but not his cousin, as he didn't imagine she would be there, modern times ruin this idea :(:D)
Back in their HQ: They raped both his wife and his cousin and tortured them. And then started asking him to indentify "subversives" in an album of people they were watching and say where he had seen them. And once again instead of playing the revolutionary macho and telling them to screw themselves he pretended to cooperate and to just be a scared newbie to the movement. He pointed out all obvious persons any idiot would know and told he had seen them in only in some public and widely known events. They kept torturing him over the days but he kept confirming only these.
There was also the "good" cop, bad cop game were after being tortured a "noble" soldier went in to look after his wounds and start a friendly conversation. Where he tried to gain my father's sympathy and convince him that the movement leaders were just using him as a pawn against the good government and that he understood his sufferment and regreted it.(my father also discovered in his cell that his "good" cop was actually the bad cop of the other guy in his cell). All the while my father pretended to have believed in him and released more useless and widely known information to him.
His relatives only confirmed every he said when pressioned because he had already told them what to tell.
And with all of these "tactics" my father and his relatives were released on the 10th day after being captured. He was still kept under watch but considered mostly as a "harmless newbie" by the military.(when in fact he had been one the key persons in many of the things that had happened).
And 10 days were wonderful when compared to the others who in the vast majority spent weeks or months until they were broken. Their error was having no plan at all. Not only admiting being well informed communists but also offending the torturers and refusing to speak a single thing. These were obviously deemed as dedicated militants by the torturers and would never be released until they were broken, and sooner or later all of them either spilled the bean or went insane from the torment.
Also my father quickly warned some comrades once he got out that he had been released and this saved the lives of a group that was planning to invade the prison to release him. Most of them armed with primitive weapons and untrained, even if it had worked it would have cost the lives of many workers to save a single one.(and would have sent a red alert to the military, he would be forever marked as a very important person to recapture)
After all of that he destroyed or hid anything that could incriminate him and took a train to Argentina thus beggining his exile.
Whew...done, feel free to comment, and I know it is VERY long. :D
Bottom line: Keep cool and play dumb (as cool as you can be while being eletrecuted, having your nails removed, whipped, flayed, beaten, broken bones, no sleep, cold, pneumonia, seeing your female relatives get raped, seeing a friend in a broken state of both mind and body and little bit more)