Talk:Torture murder

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Contents 1 legal term 2 State murder vs. Torture murder 3 Feardotcom? 4 Tidy up 5 Quality

[edit] legal term

Torture murder is a loosely defined legal term Source please. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] State murder vs. Torture murder

I've removed references to people being killed by police agencies or state organizations vs. persons killed by serial killers. A police agency may torture someone to death, but its questionable if shuch should be called torture murder. Also, if every member of a secret police group who has ever tortured a person to death was listed here as a torture murderer, the list would be very long. This artice, I feel, should stick to private individuals who illegally kill via torture murder. -Husnock 16:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

This gets back to the definition, as raised in the first part of this talk page. The death of William Wallace is referred to in the main section of the article, but that could be followed by thousands of comparable instances, including deaths in the War on Terror. It's questionable that these should be included, but only because this topic has no verifiable definition. The content should be confined to Murder and Torture - otherwise this is just dwelling on blame and suffering. Not a good thing?--Shtove 00:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Feardotcom?

"The film FeardotCom also deals with a torture murderer, kidnapping women and then killing them slowly over the Internet."

This is completely irrelevant to the article - it could possibly be put into a trivia section if there was one but I don't think one should be created for this....information. Removed it. Desdinova 23:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tidy up

I've just done a big change. A couple of notes:

• The legal position is interesting, and now included properly
• Details of specific cases are not necessary
• The "state sponsered" bit really is a differnt thing, as now explained
• The pic is gone now because it's related to the state-sponsered thing

Snori (talk) 01:28, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a completely unjustified deletion of large sourced text (the size of article was two times reduced). Torture murder can be done by an individual or several people for any reason, including an order from a gang leader, a Nazi leader, etc. State-sponsored torture murder fully qualifies.Biophys (talk) 02:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Please reconsider. My changes were fully justified. Firstly my change regards the legal position is something the article has needed from its start. The details I removed of specific cases are unnecessary, gratuitous - despite being true and well-sourced. (They are also available, more sensibly, though all the Murderes and Victims links). Finally, regarding the state-sponsered bit - where does this stop? Do we add in death squads and Pol Pot and Bagram torture and prisoner abuse? My approach is far more practical I think. Snori (talk) 09:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

You said: "true and well-sourced". That's right. That is why this should stay here per WP:NPOV - a core WP policy. WP is not censored. My main objection however is about the state-sponsored torture murder. If you argue this is insufficiently sourced and developed - that should be fixed by adding more sourced content. But if you argue that state-ordered torture murder never existed - this is simply incorrect. You provided good examples. Death squads and Pol Pot executioners would certainly qualify if they tortured people before their death. Bagram torture and prisoner abuse probably does not, as long as that was only torture but not murder.Biophys (talk) 17:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

More specifically, old version included the following segment:

"Torture murder may also be a legal act of a state, especially in nations which employ torture as a means of interrogation. Nazi Germany was well known for state sanctioned torture murder, as members of the SS were often employed to interrogate enemies of the state under slow torture, often killing them in the process. Death by slow torture was also a common occurrence in Nazi concentration camps."

You replaced it by this:

"By definition murder is "unlawful killing"; so while a nation state clearly can both torture and kill, such acts could be legal by their own laws (and in an authoritarian state or it may be dangerous to raise the question). Those who kill by torture under the authority of a state may however be later tried by another state or authority such as the International Criminal Court."

First version is something widely accepted (and can be easily sourced). Your version is questionable and unsourced.Biophys (talk) 17:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quality

I've just removed one so-called "torture murderer" because the main article on him doesn't have any evidence that he "qualifies". A quick check would seem to indicate that a good few others are similarly listed when they should not be. I'm going to leave this article for now. It really isn't such a big deal for me if this article is crap, but if any others care about it maybe that can look at my (attempted) changes today over the last few days.... Snori (talk) 08:14, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

• The whole article is a mess. I'm not even sure it should exist at all - murder and torture may often occur at the same time but so may theft and murder. This does mean an article is warranted - it should just be a subsection in both the murder and torture articles. And while we shouldn't censor, the detail in the 'style' section is over-the-top. People can click on the murderers' names to find out more info if they require it. Also the legal definition is too US-centric. The fact that no broader definition can be found again shows that the issue in general is a minor one not deserving of its own article, IMHO. Malick78 (talk) 09:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)