ABSTRACT
The professionals are the perpetrators who were forcefully trained to become torturers or killers. They went through a very harsh training programme and an extreme period of hazing, which are described in the chapter. They didn’t know what they were trained for and were just forced to obey and conform. After the training period, the toughest and most trustworthy recruits were selected and become torturers or killers. They would then torture and kill for no other reasons than having been trained and ordered to do so. In many ways these perpetrators are similar to the Devoted Warriors, but whereas the latter embrace the ideology, Professionals do not necessarily do so, to them it is just a job. They usually work in an environment in which torture and killing are institutionalized, totally accepted and normalized. Some general features of militarized organizations are discussed before the focus shifts to the very well documented training programme in which recruits were trained to become torturers in Greece under the military dictatorship (1967–1974) and one of its main torturers, namely Michaelis Petrou.
