Torture Made in Germany
February 26, 2007
Electro-shockers are black, about as long as your arm and resemble police batons but are capable of causing much more pain.
"The pain is extreme," Nedim Baran told German public broadcaster ARD of when he was tortured with an electro-shocker. "You have the feeling your eyes are popping out of your head. You think your head will explode. You can only think about your death."
There are electro-contacts on one end that transfer up to 120,000 volts of electricity into the victim's body -- about 500 times the voltage delivered by a power outlet.
"The electrons are applied in different places -- to the ears, the tongue, the temples, the genitals, such as women's nipples, and so on," said Mechthild Weng Anson a Berlin doctor who has treated people tortured with such devices.
Only recently did the German customs office confirm that German companies export electro-shockers to countries where they are used for torture: 100 to Iran, 84 to Georgia, 115 to Bangladesh.
According to ARD television, torture is currently practiced in 87 countries.
Little evidence of torture
Unlike other torture methods, however, the electro-shockers cause intense pain without leaving any visible wounds, they also make it difficult for doctors to prove that a patient had been subjected to this kind of torture.
"They are very, very common weapons of torture," said Manfred Nowak, a human rights commissioner for the United Nations. "A torture method that causes a lot of pain but can't really be proven without eye witnesses is exactly what modern torturers prefer."
UN calls for ban
In Great Britain, the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), Switzerland and Scandinavia, selling electro-shockers is forbidden. This is, however, not the case in Germany, which ranks second behind the United States in exporting the devices. German exporters need only apply for a license to sell the torture devices abroad.
"It is my wish that every country in the world would completely outlaw the export of all electro-shock weapons and punish violators with high monetary fines or prison sentences," Nowak said.