BBC Documentaries

The Unleashing of Evil (1988x3)

Air date: Jun 29, 1988

A personal inquiry by Richard Taylor. Thirty-six years ago documentary film-maker Richard Taylor was serving as a military police subaltern in Korea. Near to his tent they were interrogating prisoners - and sometimes they tortured them. That was the start of a lifelong concern about torture. Is it simply something which happens under military dictatorships and communist regimes - or is it closer to ourselves than we like to think? This investigation is not a catalogue of horrors. It asks in a more profound sense what torture does to its victims, and what turns ordinary human beings into torturers. Prompted by a disturbing encounter with a former interrogator from El Salvador 's notorious Treasury Police, he follows a trail that leads to a hard, new world where terrorism, counter-insurgency and torture meet.