I wouldn't remove torture at all. How about giving people a choice? You can choose to spill the beans or stay quiet. If you stay quiet, it means you won't talk during the interrogation time and the enemy judge can torture you for information or just because he / she is a sadist.
If you choose to spill the beans, enemies can get a portion of your letters without leaving permanent injuries.
If the judge is a sadist, why would they even care if you talk or not? Will a sadist stay his hand just because you say "Don't torture me i'll talk!"?
This is just going to lead paranoid players to include even fewer people in important matters, since now everyone can just spill the beans to avoid torture (and they will, if it does any actual lasting damage). As far as I can tell, most torture isn't even done to get info, but mainly to screw with hated enemies.
