AARON PATRICK: In the SAS, torture and interrogation training was hated. Did it cross a line?

Even among the SAS, which recruited some of the Army’s toughest men, torture training was a miserable, hated experience none forgot.

Whether the officially sanctioned abuse, which allegedly include mock executions, sexual humiliation and digital rape, should have triggered financial compensation has split former members of the regiment.

The Defence Force Ombudsman has awarded $2.9 million for physical and psychological harm to 57 veterans who went through the training, The Nightly exclusively revealed on Monday.

SAS applicants in the early 2000s said the training was 48 to 72 hours of abuse designed to teach them how to get through interrogations conducted by terrorists or governments who don’t follow the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners.

Some of the ex-SAS soldiers described the training as pointless and said it was conducted to give the Intelligence Corp experience at psychologically breaking down prisoners to obtain information.

‘You’re going in the bag’

Known as Resistance to Interrogation, or RTI, the training was conducted at the end of the a six-week bush course for SAS recruits who had passed the initial selection course.

Several veterans agreed to share details about the course with The Nightly on the condition their names weren’t published.

The soldiers said knew they were going to be handed over to interrogators when they were told: “You’re going in the bag.”

They were driven in trucks to a collection of tents on a military reserve in Western Australia under the control of intelligence officers, who are outside the command of the Special Operations Command, which controls the SAS, commandos and other special forces units.

Some SAS soldiers may have arrived with chap-stick holders inserted in their rectums, one veteran said. Some used the small plastic tubes to hide fish hooks, money or anything else that could be used to help them survive in an escape exercise conducted before the interrogation training.

Suction cups

At the tent camp, the men were blindfolded and stripped naked. They were forced to lie, most of the time, on bath mats that had been turned upside down. Over the following days, the mats’ small suction cups would break down their skin, turning the their torsos bloody.

They were kept awake with heavy-metal music or the sound of babies crying. Eventually, many became delirious. One described sobbing, convinced his mother had died. Some were mocked about the size of their genitalia.

After a while, each soldier had their mask removed and was questioned by two men. One was sympathetic. The other hostile.

They were offered a bribe — food or a cigarette — to sign a document. The soldiers had been told never to sign anything because a signature could be reproduced on a fake confession or another piece of propaganda.

One soldier described being punched off his chair several times after refusing to give up information. Two decades later he still remembers the man’s face.

When instructors decided the exercise should finish, an SAS counter-terrorism team stormed the camp and simulated freeing the captives.

One soldier was so angry at his treatment he attacked one of his interrogators, according to a veteran. The incident led to a procedural change so intelligence staff left the area before the SAS candidates were released to protect them from violence, he said.

“They are total pieces of shit and you hate them,” the ex-SAS soldier said. “But I knew it was a prerequisite to get into the regiment. It was preparing me for my job.”

Not compulsory?

The Resistance to Interrogation training is also given to pilots and other military personnel at risk of capture.

Some SAS veterans say they could have been taught how to survive torture or violent interrogations without being subjected to physical abuse.

“We didn’t learn anything,” said one veteran.

The course was designed to teach the intelligence people to torture people.

The Defence Department told a parliamentary inquiry ten years ago the training was conducted in a humane and lawful manner and mentally prepared soldiers for captivity whilst teaching them how to survive a capture situation and return to Australia with dignity

The 119-year-old Intelligence Corps, one of the Army’s oldest, lists one of its objectives as “exploitation operations”.

After complaints were raised, the Defence Force said the interrogation training was not mandatory. SAS veterans said they were under the assumption the course was compulsory.

“We weren’t told that,” one said. “It was implied that we would not be badged if we didn’t attend.”

About 200 current and former military personnel wanted compensation, according to one person involved in the process, but most were too old to qualify.

The Ombudsman said the complaints covered training from 1976 to 2012, when Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war was winding down.

One veteran who was paid said he decided to apply because the military refused to publicly acknowledge the “horrendous” behaviour of the interrogators. “The only reason I got involved is because Defence is lying again,” he said.

Another SAS veteran said the training was pointless because, as special forces soldiers, they would likely be executed by their captors anyway.