A tortured debate
Tom Bevan notes a report in the Guardian that torture may have been used to elicit information that broke up the air terror plot last week: "Agonizing over torture." And reader Dale Whitehouse notes the AP story reporting that an intercepted phone call was pivotal to detection of the plot as well:
Pakistani officials say Rashid Rauf’s arrest prompted an accomplice in the southern city of Karachi to make a panicked phone call to a suspect in Britain, giving the signal for the airliner plot to move forward urgently. The intercepted call was instrumental in foiling the bombing plot, officials say.I would guess that the interception of that phone call came without probable cause or the blessing of a magistrate.
