A group of volunteers have been locked up in cages and sexually humiliated in a British reality television show that explores torture techniques allegedly used against terrorist suspects held by the US at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq.
  
The four-part series on Channel 4 asks whether such methods can be justified as a way to combat terrorism, a spokesman for the station said.
  
"The information gained through torture has been justified as the centre of the war against terrorism," said the spokesman, who asked to remain anonymous.
  
"We want the viewers to watch techniques that we know are used at Guantanamo and really to raise questions about whether torture is justified and if it works and what does it say about our values as a Western society," he said.
  
For the Guantanamo Guidebook, to be broadcast from the end of February, seven men - three Muslims and four white Britons - were locked up in a makeshift detention centre at a warehouse in east London.
  
Over a period of 48 hours, US interrogation experts subjected them to a range of torture techniques known to be used at the notorious Cuba prison.
  
Two of the seven failed to last the course, with one choosing to pull out and the other being forced to quit due to hypothermia, the spokesman said.
  
Before embarking on the ordeal, the seven offered their opinions on torture and its justification, with some openly supporting the US methods used at Guantanamo, where more than 500 detainees have been held for two-and-a-half years.
  
Most of the real Guantanamo inmates were picked up on the battlefield when US troops invaded Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks by the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
  
The show is designed to "examine if torture is justified to combat the threat faced from terrorists such as al-Qaeda", the Channel 4 spokesman said.
  
"At the end of it, we see what the volunteers now think about torture and the use of torture," he added.
  
Production company Twenty Twenty, which produced the series for Channel 4, will also broadcast three other films that explore aspects of torture.
  
They include one by investigative journalist Andrew Gilligan, who shot to fame with his controversial 2003 BBC radio report that accused the British government of "sexing up" the case for war against Iraq.
  
In addition, renowned human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who represents several inmates at Guantanamo and has visited the prison, will offer his insight, while a fourth program will explore the use of torture at detention facilities in the United States.
  
"We also show photographs of men tortured to death in countries which supply information to the US and Britain," said Dorothy Byrne, the head of news and current affairs at Channel 4.
  
A Washington-based lawyer has said several Kuwaitis being held at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of terrorist activities were tortured into making false confessions.