The operative's psychology is to be besieged using procedural processes, interrogation and prior intelligence, so as to penetrate the enemy's inner workings. In this way, knowledge is gained regarding the thoughts, feelings, behaviour patterns and psychological traits of the adversary, which may provide precious keys in his dismantling and liquidation, in gaining influence over him, and in his decomposition and recruitment .'- a brief extract from the chillingly brutal guidelines for the staff who worked at the Central Preventive Prison for Political Prisoners of the Ministry for State Security (the STASI) in Berlin's Hohenschönhausen district, under the former repressive East German regime.

Berlin-Hohenschönhausen was not an ordinary place of detention. This former STASI remand centre did not appear on maps of East Berlin and had the sinister singularity of having as many interrogation rooms as detention cells. It was symbolic of the repressive system of the ex-GDR.

Its true function was that of the psychological decomposition of the inmates.

Today, in the absence of the torturers, three witnesses echo this topology of terror.