[Ppnews] WikiLeaks suspect Manning mistreated by military, psychiatrist says
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Thu Nov 29 10:23:14 EST 2012
WikiLeaks suspect Manning mistreated by military, psychiatrist says
Bradley Manning was held in solitary confinement despite expert's claim
he was no longer a suicide risk
*
Ed Pilkington <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/edpilkington> in
Fort Meade, Maryland
* guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Wednesday 28 November
2012 19.41 EST
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/29/wikileaks-bradley-manning-treatment/print
The psychiatrist who treated the WikiLeaks
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/wikileaks> suspect, Bradley Manning
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/bradley-manning>, while he was in
custody in the brig at Quantico has testified that his medical advice
was regularly ignored by marine commanders who continued to impose harsh
conditions on the soldier even though he posed no risk of suicide.
Captain William Hoctor told Manning's pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade
that he grew frustrated and angry at the persistent refusal by marine
officers to take on board his medical recommendations. The forensic
psychiatrist said that he had never experienced such an unreceptive
response from his military colleagues, not even when he treated
terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo.
"I had been a senior medical officer for 24 years at the time, and I had
never experienced anything like this. It was clear to me they had made
up their mind on a certain cause of action, and my recommendations had
no impact," Hoctor said.
The psychiatrist was testifying at Manning's court martial for allegedly
being the source of the massive leak of hundreds of thousands of
confidential US government documents to the whistleblower website
WikiLeaks. The 24-year-old soldier, who worked as an intelligence
analyst until his arrest in Iraq in May 2010, faces 22 counts and
possible life in military custody.
Manning's defence lawyers are attempting to have the charges thrown out
or any eventual sentence reduced by seeking to prove that the soldier
was subjected to unlawful pre-trial punishment at Quantico. During the
nine months he was in custody at the marine base in Virginia he was put
on suicide watch and a "prevention of injury" order, or PoI, that kept
him in solitary confinement and exposed him to extreme conditions that
were denounced by the UN and Amnesty International as a form of torture.
Hoctor began treating Manning from the day after he arrived at Quantico
on 29 July 2010, seeing him initially every day and then later once a
week. At first he recommended that the soldier be put on suicide watch -
the most stringent form of custody - given that he had mentioned killing
himself while previously held in Kuwait and that nooses that he had made
were found in his cell.
But within a week of seeing Manning he changed his recommendation,
reporting to officers that in his medical opinion the soldier could be
put on the lesser PoI status. His advice was ignored for a couple of
weeks, Hoctor told the court. "At Quantico they often did not
immediately follow, or sometimes did not follow at all, my recommendations."
The failure to act on the doctor's recommendation was an apparent
violation of the instructions under which marine installations operate.
The regulations state that "when prisoners are no longer considered to
be suicide risks by a medical officer, they shall be returned to
appropriate quarters."
By 27 August 2010, Hoctor testified, he had spent enough time with
Manning to recommend a further easing of conditions. From then on he
advised in a regular weekly report that Manning should be taken off PoI
altogether and returned to the general brig population.
"I was satisfied he no longer presented a risk. He did not appear to be
persistently depressed, he was not reporting suicidal thoughts, in
general he was well behaved."
Specifically, Hoctor was convinced that Manning no longer needed to be
subjected to restrictive conditions that included: no contact with other
people, being kept in his cell for more than 23 hours a day, being
checked every five minutes, sleeping on a suicide mattress with no
bedding, having his prescription glasses taken away, lights kept on at
night, having toilet paper removed.
Only on two occasions did Hoctor report that Manning appeared upset and
should be put temporarily under close observation. The first incident
occurred in December 2010 when Fox News erroneously reported that
Manning had died, and the second in January 2011 when the soldier broke
down in tears while in the exercise room.
Yet the psychiatrist's recommendation that other than these isolated
incidents Manning should be treated like other inmates was consistently
ignored. The soldier was kept on PoI throughout the rest of his time at
Quantico.
The blanket denial of his expert opinion was unprecedented in his
quarter century of practice, the psychiatrist said. "Even when I did
tours in Guantanamo and cared for detainees there my recommendations on
suicidal behaviour were followed."
Hoctor said he openly protested about the thwarting of his expert
opinion at a meeting with the commander responsible for the brig,
Colonel Robert Oltman, on 13 January 2011. At the meeting Oltman
informed the doctor that Manning would be kept on PoI "for the
forseeable future".
Hoctor said that the marine commanders should no longer pretend they
were acting out of medical concern for the detainee. "It wasn't good for
Manning. I really didn't like them using a psychiatric standard when I
thought it clinically inappropriate," Hoctor said.
The court heard that Oltman replied: "You make your recommendations, and
we'll do what we want to do."
Earlier the court martial heard from Oltman himself, who told the judge
presiding over the proceedings, Colonel Denise Lind, that he had chosen
to overlook Hoctor's advice because he didn't fully trust the doctor. A
few months before Manning arrived at Quantico, an inmate of the brig,
Captain Michael Webb, had killed himself while under Hoctor's care.
"I did not have the utmost confidence in Captain Hoctor," Oltman testified.
When that lack of trust was put to Hoctor by Manning's defence lawyer,
David Coombs, the psychiatrist replied: "If they felt that way they
should have got another person to do the job."
Despite the unprecedented conditions that Manning was held under, Hoctor
said the detainee coped quite well. "Most people would have found it
very difficult, being watched every five minutes, but he did better than
expected -- I think he decided he was going to be strong."
--
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