The list reads like a playlist at a hard rock radio station:  Queen. Nine Inch Nails. Rage Against the Machine. Dr. Dre. Pantera. Eninem. AC/DC.

But these bands–along with tunes from Sesame Street and ones sung by Barney the purple dinosaur–have been blasted at high volume for up to twenty hours a day to torment hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

Binyam Mohammed, now a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith:

There was loud music, (Eminem’s) ‘Slim Shady’ and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this nonstop over and over. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night for the months before I left. Plenty lost their minds.

For many detainees who grew up in Afghanistan where music was prohibited under Taliban rule, interrogations by U.S. forces marked their first exposure to rap and hard rock with pounding rhythms, searing guitars and intense vocals played at top volume.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. military commander in Iraq, authorized this disgusting misuse of  music on Sept. 14, 2003, in order

to create fear, disorient … and prolong capture shock.

The tactic has been common in the U.S. war on terror, with forces systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

Musicians like Massive Attack and Tom Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, are now speaking out and protesting this practice, and have begun a campaign featuring minutes of silence during concerts and festivals, said Chloe Davies of the British law group Reprieve, which represents dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees and is organizing the campaign.

According to an FBI memo, one interrogator at Guantanamo Bay bragged he needed only four days to "break" someone by alternating 16 hours of music and lights with four hours of silence and darkness.  FBI agents stationed at Gitmo said they were "told such tactics were common there," reporting numerous instances in which music was blasted at detainees.

Military contractor Donald Vance of Chicago– who says he was jailed in Iraq because his employer was suspected of selling weapons to terrorists and insurgents, and has filed a lawsuit over his detention– recounted to the Associated Press about being locked in a 9-foot-by-9-foot cell that had a speaker with a metal grate over it. Music, mostly hard rock, was almost constant:

There was a lot of Nine Inch Nails, including ‘March of the Pigs. I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You.’

Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum, spokesperson for Guantanamo’s detention center, wouldn’t give details of when and how music has been used at the prison, but said it isn’t used today. She didn’t respond when asked whether music might be used in the future.