The List of Songs CIA Used to Torture Muslim Prisoners
Did you know that as far back as 2008, organizations have been encouraging musicians to oppose the use of their music in torture employed by the US government? People at sites such as Guantanamo Bay are being tortured with whatever songs the people afflicting the suffering choose.
The songs range from extremely heavy metal, to mainstream rap, to middle eastern oud based songs.
A prisoner named Ruhal Ahmed described how it felt to be tortured with music in 2008, explaining that it drives people crazy worse than being beaten up because there is no escaping the sound to find peace mentally: it is psychological torture.
He said he was tortured with music “on many occasions.”
I can bear being beaten up, it’s not a problem. Once you accept that you’re going to go into the interrogation room and be beaten up, it’s fine. You can prepare yourself mentally. But when you’re being psychologically tortured, you can’t,” he said.
He described when the technique was introduced: “from the end of 2003 they introduced the music and it became even worse. Before that, you could try and focus on something else. It makes you feel like you are going mad. You lose the plot and it’s very scary to think that you might go crazy because of all the music, because of the loud noise, and because after a while you don’t hear the lyrics at all, all you hear is heavy banging.”
Well summarized at Andy Worthington:
Despite this, the soldiers, who were largely left to their own devices when choosing what to play, frequently selected songs with blunt messages — “F*ck Your God” by Deicide, for example, which is actually an anti-Christian rant, but one whose title would presumably cause consternation to believers in any religion — even though, for prisoners not used to Western rock and rap music, the music itself was enough to cause them serious distress.
When CIA operatives spoke to ABC News in November 2005, as part of a ground-breaking report into the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on “high-value detainees” held in secret prisons, they reported that, when prisoners were forced to listen to Eminem’s Slim Shady album, “The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic.” And in May 2003, when the story first broke that music was being used by US PsyOps teams in Iraq, Sgt. Mark Hadsell, whose favored songs were said to be “Bodies” by Drowning Pool and “Enter the Sandman” by Metallica, told Newsweek, “These people haven’t heard heavy metal. They can’t take it.
It can’t be described how evil this is. Torture is a fate worse than death to some people, and the American people ignore their government doing it: a fate worse than death is what people are overlooking.
Here are some of the songs they used to torture people (many of which still have not been convicted of a crime and simply rot in Guantanamo Bay).
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“Take Your Best Shot” by Dope
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“Dirrty” by Christina Aguilera
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“Zikrayati (My Memories)” by Mohamed el-Qasabgi
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“Babylon” by David Grey
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“I Love You” by The Barney Theme
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“Saturday Night Fever” by the Bee Gees
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The Meow Mix theme
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“The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson
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“Fu*k Your God” by Deicide
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“We Are the Champions” by Queen
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(Image credit: YouTube)