[News] Medics joined CIA 'torture' sessions: Red Cross

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Medics joined CIA 'torture' sessions: Red Cross
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gsevzFGVTZkeTOL-lvXaCyqVRO0w


WASHINGTON (AFP) ­ US medical personnel took part 
in CIA torture sessions in a "gross breach of 
medical ethics," the Red Cross concludes in a 
confidential report leaked this week.

Medical officers monitored and sometimes 
participated in waterboarding terror suspects, 
and were present when the detainees were slammed 
into walls, subjected to temperature extremes or 
deprived of food and sleep for days, according to 
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The allegations were featured in a February 2007 
report partially leaked by the New York Review of 
Books last month and posted for the first time in 
its entirety on the magazine's website Monday.

ICRC spokesman Bernard Barrett confirmed to AFP 
the authenticity of the leaked report, which had 
been intended only for high-ranking US government officials.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the report.

The 40-page document is based on ICRC interviews 
with 14 "high-value" detainees sent to the US 
base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2006, 
following spells at secret CIA detention centers abroad.

In the interviews, detainees told the ICRC that 
medical workers took part in torture and fine-tuned the harshness of treatment.

They at times "gave instructions to interrogators 
to continue, to adjust or to stop particular 
methods," detainees say in the ICRC report.

One medical official told detainee Encep 
"Hambali" Nuraman: "I look after your body only 
because we need you for information," the report said.

It said the health personnel's alleged 
participation "constituted a gross breach of 
medical ethics and, in some cases, amounted to 
participation in torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

Their main role was "to serve the interrogation 
process, and not the patient," the Red Cross 
noted. "In so doing, the health personnel have 
condoned, and participated in ill-treatment."

Alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said 
that his oxygen and pulse were monitored when he 
was waterboarded, and that the simulated drowning 
was stopped on several occasions at the request of a health person.

Walid bin Attash, a detainee who had had one leg 
amputated, said a person he assumed to be a 
doctor checked his healthy leg for swelling while 
he was held with his arms shackled above his head.

The medical attendant eventually ordered bin 
Attash to be allowed to sit on the floor.

At least five copies of the report had been 
shared with the CIA and top White House officials 
in 2007, but were barred from public release by 
ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the organization's neutrality.

"We deplore that a confidential report was made 
public," Barrett said. "It was only intended to 
be shared with senior officials in the US government."

The report is a new embarrassment for the former 
administration of president George W. Bush. It 
said that beyond the ill-treatment of the 14 
prisoners interviewed, their detention amounted 
to "arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced 
disappearance, in contravention of international law."

Shortly after taking office in January, President 
Barack Obama banned the use of torture and 
ordered the closure of all CIA detention facilities.

Obama has so far been cool on calls for enquiries 
into alleged abuses under his predecessor, but he 
has not ruled out possible prosecutions.

CIA spokesman George Little noted that the White 
House has ordered agents to "not use 
interrogation techniques outside the Army Field Manual."

He also said that no one acting "on legal 
guidance from the Department of Justice at the 
time" faced investigation or punishment.




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