On September 27, 2002, Magnus Gäfgen kidnapped 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler. Fast forward to four days later, when Gäfgen was arrested by German police, who had watched a ransom demanded by Gäfgen be paid out to him, yet with no release of the child was not released or his location.. With time running out and tensions growing, deputy police chief of Frankfurt, Wolfgang Daschner, ordered torture, upon which Gäfgen disclosed Metzler 's location just minutes before the action could be committed, only for police to find Metzler, whose body was at a lake in rural Frankfurt, was already dead.1 While the threat of torture in this scenario may have worked and revealed the location of Metzler 's body, the order was ultimately unethical not only in deontological and consequentialist viewpoints regarding human rights and law itself, but also in a virtue ethics viewpoint regarding human morality. This essay will discuss how the call for torture was unethical based upon deontological, consequentialist, and virtue ethics.
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Firstly, opposition to the order of torture is backed by the United Nations Convention Against Torture, in which Germany is one of many countries included. Article 1, Section 1 of the Convention Against Torture defines torture as “...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,” and goes on to say “Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction” and “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of
Firstly, opposition to the order of torture is backed by the United Nations Convention Against Torture, in which Germany is one of many countries included. Article 1, Section 1 of the Convention Against Torture defines torture as “...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,” and goes on to say “Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction” and “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of