I hope... no... I pray that they were guilty:

Reports from Pakistan suggest that much of the intelligence that led to the raids came from that country and that some of it may have been obtained in ways entirely unacceptable here. In particular Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies. The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know - torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all."

I haven't talked about torture in quite a while.  The last time I did, I was pretty much undecided on the issue, and wrote a rather long back and forth argument with myself here.  I'm still very undecided on the issue, but as I said in that earlier post, I'm still leaning towards no.  The one question I didn't ask in that post was, "What if they're not guilty?"  Torture is almost always performed before any sort of real trial.  No defense council is present, and the victim has no opportunity to present evidence that he's innocent of the crime to which he's accused.

Moreover, whoever is torturing that person assumes he's guilty.  I'd think you would have to assume the person you're torturing is guilty.  Torture is hard enough in general... how could any decent human being even contemplate torturing an innocent man?  So what happens if the victim "breaks" under torture, but gives you bad information?

One way to explain it is that they're guilty, and tried to throw you off by giving you bad information just to get you to stop for a while.  The second explanation is that they're totally innocent, know nothing, but had to tell you something or you wouldn't stop torturing them.  But if you assume the victim's guilty, like you'd have to in order to even begin, how can you possibly think it's the second?  And so... how does an innocent person ever escape torture?

Every time I hear about someone being tortured for information, the same thought always goes through my head.  I hope they're guilty, because if they're not... God help you.