Photo: Press
Reports have surfaced from the American Civil Liberties Union surrounding the use of Westlife and heavy metal music to torture a Tanzanian captive.
The music was played at ear-splitting volumes to disable the fisherman's senses while the guards mercilessly tortured the man for months on end. It's very important you read the entire report called 'Out of the Darkness'. Westlife's 2000 single 'My Love' was one of the songs specifically mentioned.
Suleiman Abdullah was abducted in Mogadishu, Somalia by a Kenyan warlord in 2003 and handed over to the CIA and Kenyan government. He used then tortured for months and moved around various prisons until he was released from a military prison at Bagram in Afghanistan five years later.
The report reads: "His interrogators would intersperse a syrupy song called 'My Love' with heavy metal, played on repeat at ear-splitting volume," the report states. "They told Suleiman, a newly wed fisherman from Tanzania, that they were playing the love song especially for him. Suleiman had married his wife Magida only two weeks before the CIA and Kenyan agents abducted him in Somalia, where he had settled while fishing and trading around the Swahili Coast. He would never see Magida again."
"The music pounded constantly as part of a scheme to assault prisoners’ senses. It stopped only when a CD skipped or needed changing. When that happened, prisoners would call to one another in a desperate attempt to find out who was being held alongside them. A putrid smell that reminded Suleiman of rotting seaweed permeated the prison. His cell was pitch black; he couldn’t see a thing. The U.S. government refers to the prison as 'COBALT.' Suleiman calls it 'The Darkness.'"
This isn't the first time popular music and war tactics have crossed paths. Last year, Red Hot Chili Peppers spoke out about the use of their music in interrogations.
Speaking on the situation, drummer Chad Smith said: "Our music's positive man, it's supposed to make people feel good and that's... it's very upsetting to me, I don't like that at all. It's bullshit."
