麻豆传媒

WHEN Fran莽oise Sironi was 6, her grandfathers met for the first time. One was Italian, the other from the French frontier region of Alsace. She remembers the conversation turning serious, then being mystified when the men fell weeping into each other鈥檚 arms. They had discovered they fought in the same first-world-war battle 鈥� but on opposite sides. The incident sparked a lifelong interest in what drives ordinary people to extraordinary acts. She became a clinical psychologist and, in 1993, helped found the Primo Levi Centre in Paris to treat the victims of torture. She is now an expert witness for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, specialising in assessing those accused of crimes against humanity or genocide.

Why did you decide to help people who have committed atrocities?

I was at the Primo Levi Centre in 1995 when a French NGO called Sant茅 Sud asked if we could help Russian veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war. These were young men who had come home psychologically damaged only to discover that no one cared about that war any more because the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.

Some of my colleagues refused to help them because they had committed atrocities. I saw them as time bombs that would go off if they weren鈥檛 treated. They kept being drawn back to violence. Many had been recruited by the Russian mafia or as mercenaries.

Helping both torturers and their victims didn鈥檛 strike you as incompatible?

Not at all. By then I had realised that to understand one, you have to understand the other. For example, a torturer inflicting sexual abuse might say, 鈥淵ou鈥檒l never be a man again.鈥� To treat the person those words were directed at, you need an insight into the torturer鈥檚 intentions. But often the victim is too ashamed to repeat this. I was ineluctably drawn to become interested in torturers.

Do you believe in evil?

As a psychologist, you have a choice: either you think of the person opposite you as a monster or as a human being. If they are a monster, that鈥檚 the end of the conversation. It鈥檚 far more interesting to ask, what made them that way? In my view, people who commit evil acts have followed life paths that have led them to view those acts as reasonable.

Can you remember the first time you sat down with a torturer?

It was in the early days at Primo Levi. I treated many victims who had themselves tortured 鈥� police officers who had fought jihadists during the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, for example, before the jihadists caught and tortured them in turn. It was the same with veterans of the Yugoslav wars. Over the past 25 years, I have treated the survivors of torture, massacres and forced deportations, and there have always been perpetrators among them.

What kind of person becomes a perpetrator?

Many have grown up in a violent family, or experienced humiliation early in life. Then when they are recruited, their identity is often broken down in some way. This might involve a traumatic initiation process: children who are forced to become soldiers may be required to kill members of their family, for example. They can no longer return to their families or villages and they become dependent on the new group 鈥� their fellow child killers 鈥� and in particular, on the commander of that group.

This may help to explain one of the most troubling scenarios, which is medics who facilitate torture 鈥� advising interrogators when to turn the electricity off, for example, so that the victim鈥檚 heart doesn鈥檛 give out too soon. They no longer belong to a group whose identity is defined by doing no harm.

How does someone become a torturer?

There are schools. We know, for example, that French soldiers who fought in Vietnam in the 1950s learned techniques from their enemies that they later taught in camps in South America. Torture camps are well hidden, but there are plenty of them. Torture is thought to go on in half of all countries, and torturers have to learn somehow. The schools all have things in common: they are secret, they are set apart from the military, they portray themselves as elite. They inculcate a sense of duty, necessity, pride, of impunity.

There are cultures of torture. In the 1970s, the Syrian secret services used techniques honed by former Nazi interrogators whom they employed as consultants. Declassified manuals describe the techniques the CIA considered effective.

In 2008, you assessed Duch, the Khmer Rouge leader who tortured and killed thousands at the notorious S-21 prison. What did you conclude?

Duch is an example of what I call a man-system 鈥� someone who has relinquished their own identity and adopted that of the ideological system they grew up in. The same is true of Pascal Simbikangwa, who I also assessed and who is in prison for his role in the Rwandan genocide. They don鈥檛 fit any known psychiatric category. Their behaviour can only be understood in the geopolitical or historical context in which it arose.

What are the main characteristics of such individuals?

A strong sense of group belonging and duty, and an ability to compartmentalise. Duch was capable of talking normally about his family one minute and discussing his 鈥渨ork鈥� at S-21 the next. It wasn鈥檛 easy for him to torture, he told us, yet he trained youngsters to do it. When he expressed regret, it was on behalf of the Khmer Rouge, not himself. At one point I asked, 鈥淲hat happened to your conscience?鈥� He replied he didn鈥檛 understand the question.

鈥淐hild soldiers can be forced to kill family members. They can never go back鈥�

Can you cure a torturer?

No, I don鈥檛 think they can be cured, as such. But we can help them to dismantle the psychological mechanisms that pushed them to commit violence. You can lead them to understand why they participated in torture, how they became capable of it, and then to process their emotional response to that. Before this can happen, though, the person has to want to address this dark chapter of their past, and many 鈥� I would say most 鈥� do not.

What effect does it have on you to spend time with torturers and murderers like Duch?

I interviewed Duch 16 times. Strangely, my reaction was physical rather than emotional. It was hot in Phnom Penh, but every time I left his cell I felt cold. My colleagues and I 鈥� I was always accompanied by a Cambodian psychiatrist and an interpreter 鈥� would have our debrief huddled together for warmth.

What is your goal in all this?

One goal, of course, is prevention 鈥� for the sake of the perpetrators as well as others, because as I said they suffer too. My role is to induce awareness in them, and if possible change. It鈥檚 also to transmit what I learn to other professionals who deal with violence so that it may be of use in the treatment as well as the prevention of extreme behaviour.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淚nside the minds of torturers鈥�