ABSTRACT
The literature suggests that anyone could become an official torturer, given certain conditions. This chapter focuses on the perpetration of torture and addresses the issue from a different angle, by exploring the notion of torture as a process involving several sets of actors. It examines existing research that questions whether ordinary people become torturers, and the process by which this occurs. The chapter considers the structural conditions that may give rise to state torture. It investigates the involvement of a level of perpetration in the process of torture – the state that exports its savoir-faire in torture techniques. H. C. Kelman and V. L. Hamilton have identified three specific conditions for crimes of obedience in state-sanctioned massacres that make it easier for individuals to commit acts such as torture: authorisation, dehumanisation and routinisation. The testimony of an Argentinian victim of torture illustrates that responsibility for and complicity in the torture of Maria spreads much further than Melanie Collard's individual torturers.
