He seems like an amiable guy, I'd actually like to personally meet him and maybe I will take a trip up to Berlin to tour the prison. In 1987, before The Wall fell, he was arrested and incarcerated in East Berlin's Hohenschönhausen Prison for 3 months. His crime? He tried to escape through Hungary, to Yugoslavia, and then to the West.
Yes but, how did it start? It started when Herr Röllig was working as a 19 year old at an airport bar and the Stasi wanted him to become an "unofficial employee" and spy on his friends and bribed him with an apartment. His response?
"But I didn't want to betray my friends for a flat. I said how about a flat in Charlottenburg?" Charlottenburg is a district of West Berlin.
Pretty ballsey if you ask me. It also cost him attention and constant watching
http://www.spiegel.de/...
"When we stepped out of the van there were men in riding boots with riding breeches and rubber truncheons screaming at us to remove our belts and shoelaces. I thought I was in a Nazi movie"
First of all, the purpose of diary is not only to remember one human being who was a victim of torture, but to educate on the fuzzy "frat pranks" that most people would not consider torture.
Lately, you may have noticed, I decided to write a little on torture and SERE from my perspective as a SERE graduate. Kossack Joesig also a SERE grad and retired Navy SEAL wrote about torture and the SERE program. We both commented about how the techniques are introduced, but they make a point of teaching you that they cannot simulate the one major psychological weapon of not knowing where you are or when you are going home. I want to illustrate here what that really means and how it is torture. I am not even going to go into waterboarding, I am going to go into something more grey in the sleep deprivation technique and how that is in fact torture. Let's talk SERE sleep deprivation and its origins.
Get a good look at this man, pretty handsome guy, eh? And 41! Two years younger than I, I turn 43 this month (ugh)
The DoJ memos state that it is not torture, if it does not cause organ failure or long-term psychological damage.
But let's look at sleep deprivation and the feeling that you are never coming home and the effect it has on you. The right insists it is not torture, but I will let you decide.
1. What is Sleep Deprivation and how is it torture? What are it's effects as a method of torture?
The reports say that the US could not keep a man awake more than 11 days. That's because the perpetrators know longer than that is impossible. Nevertheless, our own military installed rules that servicemembers must be allowed 7 hours asleep per night, exceptions are like in Ranger school where you get about 3 hours sleep per night over the course of several weeks, that is also sleep deprivation and any Kossack psychologist will tell you that lack of sleep is culmulative.
Röllig still wakes up in a sweat at night wondering if he's broken prison rules by sleeping on his side. The sound of a two-stroke car engine still makes his heart pound because it reminds him of the van that brought him to jail in a five-hour odyssey that was aimed at disorientating him.
How many of you roll around at night? Kicking and flaying your arm around your spouse or lover? It's habit and you're not really conscious of it right? Well, until you get an elbow in the ribs. Well think about your own sleep habits and then think about this:
Röllig was kept in a one-man cell. Prisoners weren't allowed to sit or lie on their bed until 10 p.m. when the lights were turned out. During the night they had to lie on their backs at all times. "The guards would check throughout the night. If you lay on your side they would turn the light on, kick the door with their boots and yell."
That is professional sleep deprivation. You can catch a cat nap, but you can never fall into a deep sleep, they will wake you up. It's harsher than sleep apnoe, that doesn't allow you to fall into deep sleep and makes it dangerous for heavy duty machinery operations or even driving during the day when you may unexpectedly fall asleep. Imagine this for weeks on end, or months even years on end.
Ok, long term effects. Herr Röllig is diagnosed with PTSD
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Röllig's legs still buckle at the memory of being locked up without knowing where he was, of body cavity searches while naked, of being threatened with indefinite incarceration.
Let's see, it's acceptable by the DoJ memos that we can use forced nudity and keep the detainees incarcerated indefinately, or at least not tell them when they are going home. Does this sound like Americans or Stasi?
"They said if I didn't talk about my friends they would arrest my parents too or take my sister's child from her. They said 'no one knows where you are, we can do what we want and no one will ever find out. We'll just say you disappeared in the West.' There were moments when I really thought I might not make it out alive."
Let's see, do we recognize anything familiar here? Didn't we kidnap KSM's children and and subject them to ants? Threat of death is torture by international and Red Cross standards. This man was in a similar situation as our detainees for only three months. Some of the detainees have been there for seven years, what do you think they think?
Long term psychological effects? Well this I can relate to because I have the same thing but for very different reasons.
Like many of the 250,000 political prisoners held in East German jails during the 41-year communist regime, Röllig is suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder. A noise or a smell can trigger a memory and cause panic.
Now you decide, by the memos own guidelines that if it does not cause long term psychological damage, it is not torture - decide by their own twisted legal standards.
Ok the diary is getting too long again and I am only half way through this incredible person's life. If there is more interest, I post part two.