Torture Journal

This issue opens with Van den Bergh and colleagues' analysis of 63 narrative medico-legal reports from Denmark, in which Amnesty International's Medical Group evaluations of asylum seekers were transformed into structured data. Their findings, drawn from evaluations carried out between 2013 and 2025, document high rates of physical, psychological, and deprivation-based torture methods, along with significant associations between teléfono and hearing loss and between falanga and reduced sensation in the lower limbs, illustrating the epidemiological value of systematising narrative torture documentation.       Hartmann and colleagues explore how states have written the UN Convention against Torture into domestic criminal law, and whether liability stops at state-linked perpetrators or extends to non-state actors. Using original global data, the article finds that nearly two-thirds of State Parties criminalise torture as an autonomous crime, and around a quarter of these cover all non-state actors. Case studies of Uganda, which adopted a broad definition including private perpetrators, and Kenya, which largely kept the Convention's state-centred approach, show how domestic politics, institutions, and history shape the design of anti-torture legislation.       Llorens and colleagues then turn to former political prisoners in Venezuela, drawing on two participative action research projects to examine both the individual and relational harms of imprisonment and the resilience strategies survivors and their families develop to sustain relationships and regain agency. Their contribution underscores the value of collaborative methodologies that position survivors as active participants in the research.       Beriso offers a legal analysis of Ethiopia's constitutional framework, examining how the FDRE Constitution's Article 18(1) prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment without explicitly naming torture. Drawing on comparative analysis with Uganda, South Africa, and Nigeria, the article traces the constitutional, criminal-law, and transitional-justice consequences of this omission and proposes legislative elements needed to bring Ethiopian law into alignment with the Convention against Torture.       Kelepa examines Lesotho's outstanding obligation to domesticate the UN Convention against Torture, arguing that as a dualist state Lesotho requires standalone anti-torture legislation rather than reliance on unincorporated treaty text. Drawing lessons from comparable jurisdictions and case law in which Lesotho's courts have nonetheless developed protective doctrine through precedent, the article sets out concrete legislative recommendations for closing this gap.       Alsairafi presents a cross-sectional study of 383 Palestinian adults detained by Israeli authorities during the October 2023 war, examining the prevalence and comorbidity of depression, anxiety, and PTSD among survivors. The study finds an extremely high and highly comorbid symptom burden, with near-universal torture exposure limiting the predictive power of standard demographic and exposure variables, reinforcing the need for integrated, trauma-informed care and continued documentation.       Hossain revisits the 2013 Shapla Chattar operation in Dhaka, when state forces violently dispersed a peaceful protest. Drawing on secondary sources such as Odhikar and Human Rights Watch fact-finding reports, government data, and media archives, it estimates that between 93 and over 300 people were killed. It concludes that the operation meets the criteria for a crime against humanity and calls for judicial accountability through the reformed International Crimes Tribunal.       Pikirenia and colleagues contribute a cross-sectional survey of 77 former Belarusian political prisoners who emigrated following the 2020 post-election crackdown. Combining quantitative data with semi-structured interviews, the study documents widespread physical and psychological ill-treatment during detention, high rates of suicidality in custody, and the centrality of humiliation and isolation as tools of coercion, findings that support revised Istanbul Protocol-based approaches treating imprisonment, release, and forced migration as a single exposure trajectory.       John Hawkins then looks ahead to the future of coercion, moving beyond the ticking-bomb debate that still dominates discussion of interrogational torture. He argues that defence-funded brain-computer interfaces, combined with large language models and fusion databases, could support what he terms "nano-totalitarianism": a convergence of pervasive personal data, neurodata, adaptive AI, and technologically mediated coercion capable of penetrating and continuously conditioning the inner sphere of the person. Tracing a lineage from the MKULTRA experiments to the logic of surveillance capitalism, the essay is explicit in distinguishing demonstrated current capability from plausible convergence and speculative possibility, offering a cautionary framework for anticipating how torture may evolve.       In the Case Report section, Pulin and colleagues describe a clinical case series of telefono-type auditory violence among Bangladeshi migrants transiting through Libya, identified through the MSF People on the Move project in Agrigento, Sicily. The series highlights the persistence of otologic symptoms long after the initial injury and argues for greater clinical awareness of this under-recognised form of torture among recently arrived migrants.       The issue closes with two Book Reviews. Sara López reviews Lutz Oette's The Transformation of the Prohibition of Torture in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2024), while Gunge reviews Tortured as a Child: Torture, Forced Migration and the Right to Rehabilitation (Johansson Metso, 2026), an interdisciplinary anthology from the Swedish Red Cross Competence Centre for the Rehabilitation of Torture and War Trauma that highlights the continued invisibility of children as torture survivors within legal and healthcare systems.       Together, the contributions in this issue span the documentation and epidemiology of torture, legal accountability and treaty implementation, the mental health consequences of detention and crowd-control violence, emerging technological threats, and the recognition of under-examined survivor populations, reaffirming the central importance of rigorous evidence, legal reform, and clinical recognition in the global response to torture and ill-treatment.