Channel 4 is to broadcast what it is styling a Guantánamo Bay-style reality show that will examine the effects of mild torture on seven male volunteers.
The Guantánamo Guidebook will recreate some of the practices used at the US naval base where hundreds of so-called "enemy combatants" have been held without trial or access to lawyers for nearly three years.
Using an east London warehouse and declassified internal documents obtained from US sources, programme-makers mocked up conditions as they are inside Guantánamo, before subjecting seven volunteers to some of the milder forms of torture alleged to have been used by US authorities.
The programme exposed the volunteers, three of whom are Muslim, to 48 hours of "torture lite" including sleep deprivation, the use of extreme temperatures and "mild" physical contact.
As at Guantánamo and more vividly in Abu Ghraib, the volunteers were also subject to periods of enforced nudity and religious and sexual humiliation.
The seven male volunteers, one of whom withdrew after just seven hours suffering from hypothermia, were recruited initially by adverts asking how "hard" they were.
After psychological testing there were then told what the programme was about and the list whittled down to seven. All were offered counselling after filming was finished.
The programme is part of a four-pronged investigation into the modern-day use of torture practices, in and outside the Cuban island base which Amnesty International has described as an "icon of lawlessness".
It is part of an upcoming season of films examining the use of torture in the "war against terror".
Presented by Jon Snow, Channel 4 says the programme is designed to examine the widespread use of torture and whether it can ever be justified in what the US and UK governments have called the wider war "against terror."
"The use of torture or of information gained through torture has been justified as essential on the war against terror," said the Channel 4 head of news and current affairs, Dorothy Byrne.
"This season of programmes challenges the viewers to watch torture techniques we know are used in Guantánamo [and asks whether] can such torture ever be justified. Does it work? And how the values of western society are undermined by the use of such torture."
Set for a late night slot at the end of this month, the 20/20-produced show is among a series of four programmes devoted to torture.
Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith, the first British lawyer allowed into the notorious island prison, introduces a film looking at whether torture actually works, while the investigative journalist Andrew Gilligan examines the use of torture against alleged al-Qaida suspects globally.
The final film looks at the use of torture within the US penitentiary system itself to discover that abuses against US citizens are often worse that those meted out to foreigners.
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