Torture chamber
[3][4] The medieval torture chamber was windowless and often built underground, dimly lit and specifically designed to induce horror, dread and despair.
[5] Historically, torture chambers were located in royal palaces, in castles of the nobility and even buildings belonging to the church.
They featured secret trap-doors which could be activated to throw victims into dark dungeons where they remained and eventually died.
Other times the dungeons under the trap-doors included pits of water where the victim was thrown to drown after a lengthy torture session in the chamber above.
[6] In Peru, the torture chambers of the Spanish Inquisition were specifically constructed with thick walls so that the screams of the victims could not penetrate them and no sound could be heard from the outside.
Other times the torture chamber was used as the final destination in a series of prison cells where the victims would gradually be moved from one type of cell to another, under progressively worsening conditions of incarceration, and if they did not recant in the earlier stages they would finally reach the torture chamber.
According to Ashokavadana, Ashoka asked Girika, who was the official executioner of his kingdom, to design an elaborate torture chamber disguised as a beautiful and "enticing" palace adorned with all kinds of decorations and full of amenities such as exclusive baths decorated with flowers, fruit trees and many ornaments.
[14][15] The torture chamber was so terrifying, that King Ashoka himself was thought to have visited hell so that he could perfect its evil design.
Inside the chamber waited the executioner, his face completely covered apart from two holes in the garment to enable him to peer through and wearing a black hood; his menacing appearance being described as "most diabolical" and "satanic".
Subsequently, the victim was raised to the ceiling and then lowered using a jerking motion causing dislocation of the shoulder joints.
[30] The chamber where the victims were being burnt was of circular construction and resembled the furnace of a glass-house with a funnel-like chimney at the top.
In a similar vein the torture chamber of the Spanish Inquisition in Lima, Peru had one metre thick walls so that the screams of the victims could not penetrate them.
[6] The torture chamber was the final destination in a progression of four cell types during incarceration at the Palace of the Inquisition.
[39][40][41][42] The isolation felt inside the Nazi torture chambers was so strong that author, and victim, K. Zetnik, during his testimony at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, has described them as another galaxy.
[44] The Esmeralda, a training ship of the Chilean Navy had also been used as a "floating torture chamber" during Pinochet's dictatorship.
[51][52][53] Alexandros Panagoulis and Army Major Spyros Moustaklis are examples of people tortured at the EAT/ESA (Greek Military Police) interrogation cell units.
After the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces, pictures of dead Iraqis, with their necks slashed, their eyes gouged out and their genitals blackened, were located in many torture chambers.
[54] Jail cells, with dried blood on the floor and rusted shackles bolted to the walls, lined the corridors.
[55] In November 2004, U.S. Marines found a number of torture rooms in Fallujah by following trails of dried blood, or the smell of dead bodies.
[56] Libyans have entered abandoned torture chambers and found devices that have been used against opposition members in the past.
[58] In April 2022, evidence of the brutal mass rape and massacre by Russian forces of the residents of the Ukrainian town of Bucha came to light.
Soldiers of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces said they had found eighteen mutilated bodies of men, women, and children in a summer camp's basement in Zabuchchya, near Bucha.
