What breaks a man?: How Westlife became part of CIA torture protocol
It’s strange how the CIA’s use of music in their torture practices is what really captured our imagination, isn’t it?
It wasn’t the beating, it wasn’t the psychological torment, it wasn’t the waterboarding, the extradition or the sexual assault. Those crimes against humanity did find their way into the public conscious. Along with the fact that they were most often carried out against innocent civilians ‘suspected’ of involvement with terror organisations. No, it was the fact that they were carried out to the strains of some of the biggest pop hits of the day.
Some were more famously involved in these war crimes than others. Drowning Pool’s ‘Bodies’ was a song famously played in order to extract false confessions out of people with nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, a fact that the band themselves were hugely proud of, by the way. As were other thunderous heavy metal tracks played at the kind of volume Metallica would only dream of playing a stadium at. However, these maniacs in charge of torturing civilians were nothing if not creative, and they branched out to other kinds of music too.
Many softer tracks found their way into their torture playlists too. Several children’s songs, like the theme tune to Barney the Dinosaur, were played, presumably to induce the same feeling of horror that any parent gets when they hear that song. However, one of the strangest songs they used in their torture efforts was one that seems purposely picked to be the least offensive song possible. The truth of the matter is that it was picked on purpose, but for a truly horrific reason.
Why was a Westlife song used to torture people?
I won’t lie to you and say that the obvious joke hasn’t crossed my mind. Any smirking hack could make a crack at how any song by the Irish boyband Westlife could be considered torture in a trial at The Hague, especially their 2000 smash hit ‘My Love’. A simpering, sexless chore that doesn’t even have the common decency to be entertainingly bad. Yet the story behind the use of this song in particular just puts a sour taste in my mouth.
We know the grotty details behind this song due to a report the American Civil Liberties Union published called ‘Out of the Darkness’. In it, Tanzanian fisherman Suleiman Abdullah details his experience being captured and tortured by the CIA. The track was played on repeat at agonising volume, but the track wasn’t picked for no reason. No, the CIA knew exactly what they were doing by picking a syrupy ballad all about being desperate to see your loved one again.
As the report details, “They told Suleiman, a newlywed fisherman, that they were playing the love song especially for him.” Of course, this was combined with everything I was talking about earlier. Suleiman was doused with ice-cold water, beaten and slammed into walls. Yet there’s undeniably something particularly cruel about part of that torture being inspired by the fact that you just got married, and having the fact that you might never see your wife again thrown in your face at deafening volume.
Then, you’d expect nothing less from the good people at the CIA, would you?