Elmo's World: Friends from Season 37

Elmo's World: Friends from Season 37

A new documentary from Al Jazeera says Sesame Street music was used to torture detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

According to the documentary, called "Songs of War," prisoners at the U.S. Naval base were forced to wear headphones blasting music from the popular children's series on repeat for days on end.


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"My first reaction was this just can't possibly be true," award-winning Sesame Street composer Christoper Cerf told Al Jazeera.

"Of course I didn't really like the idea that I was helping break down prisoners, but it was much worse when I heard later that they were actually using the music in Guantanamo to do deep, long-term interrogations and obviously to inflict enough pain on prisoners so they would talk."

This isn't the first report about music from Sesame Street being used to break the will of prisoners.

In 2003, the U.S. reportedly used the soundtrack on Iraqi prisoners of war.

Reports surfaced in 2008 that heavy metal Metallica music was being used at Guantanamo.