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February 01, 2005
Al Qaeda Rule 18 on Torture; Noninformative Actions and Bayesian Updating
Via some blogger who I forgot to note, see The Telegraph on Rule 18 of the Al Qaeda handbook -- claim you were tortured. The U.S. government has posted therulebook.
...the al-Qa'eda training manual discovered during a raid in
Manchester a couple of years ago. Lesson 18 of that manual, whose
authenticity has not been questioned, emphatically states, under the
heading "Prison and Detention Centres", that, when arrested, members
of al-Qa'eda "must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on
them by state security investigators. [They must] complain to the
court of mistreatment while in prison".
Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga, Moazzam Begg and Richard Belmar finally
arrived back in Britain last week after their three-year imprisonment
in Guantanamo, to near-universal acclaim and sympathy. Their lawyers
insist that they are totally innocent of any involvement in terrorism.
The men themselves say that they have been tortured,...
This is a good example of a principle I frequently apply: if people will do X
in either state A or state B, then we you see them do X, don't change your
beliefs as to which is more likely, A or B. You have not gotten any information
from observing them do X.
The Al Qaeda book looks like it might have other interesting cloak and dagger stuff too-- how to do surveillance, and so forth.
Posted by erasmuse at February 1, 2005 02:36 PM
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