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News :: Children : Civil & Human Rights : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Prisons : Regime |
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Report Indicates US Medical Personnel Complicit in Gitmo Abuses |
Current rating: 0 |
by Tanya Talaga and Karen Palmer
(No verified email address) |
23 Jun 2005
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Guantanamo medical records misused; Basis of interrogators' strategy |
Medical records compiled by doctors caring for prisoners at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay are being tapped to design more effective interrogation techniques, says an explosive new report.
Doctors, nurses and medics caring for the approximately 600 prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are required to provide health information to military and CIA interrogators, according to the report in the respected New England Journal of Medicine.
"Since late 2003, psychiatrists and psychologists (at Guantanamo) have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress, combined with behavior-shaping rewards, to extract actionable intelligence from resistant captives," it states.
Such tactics are considered torture by many authorities, the authors note.
Medical personnel belonging to the U.S. military's Southern Command have also been told to volunteer to interrogators information they believe may be valuable, the report adds.
The report was published ahead of schedule last night on the journal's website "because of current public interest in this topic," the journal says.
The report's authors — Dr. Gregg Bloche, a physician who is also a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, and Jonathan Marks, a London lawyer who is currently a fellow in bioethics at Georgetown's law center— say that while Guantanamo veterans are ordered not to discuss what goes on there, making it difficult to know how, exactly, military intelligence personnel have used medical information for interrogation, they've been able to assemble part of the picture.
They suggest that interrogators at the camp, set up in 2001 to detain prisoners captured in Afghanistan and later Iraq, have had access to prisoners' medical records since early 2003.
That contradicts Pentagon statements that there is a separation between intelligence-gathering and patient care.
William Winkenwerder, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said in a memo made public in May that Guantanamo prisoners' medical records are considered private — as are American citizens'.
However, "this claim, our inquiry has determined, is sharply at odds with orders given to military medical personnel and with actual practice at Guantanamo," the authors write.
Using medical records to devise interrogation protocols crosses an ethical line, said Peter Singer, director of the University of Toronto's Joint Center for Bioethics.
"The goal for the physician is to care for the sick, not to aid an interrogation," he said. "Patients are patients and prisoners are prisoners and mixing those two things on the part of physicians who work in prisons is actually quite dangerous. Physicians are there for the benefit of patients and if they are seen to be there for some other purpose, it really blurs what they're doing."
An Amnesty International Canada spokesman said the report gives serious pause to anyone who is following what happens at Guantanamo.
"This reinforces the necessity for a full, independent commission of inquiry into the detentions. What is going on and what rules are being violated," John Tackaberry said from Ottawa.
"The American government needs to accept its responsibility to expose what is actually happening and show the world they are following standards that are acceptable in terms of international law," he said.
According to the authors, a previously unreported U.S. Southern Command policy statement dated Aug. 6, 2002, instructs health-care providers that communications from "enemy persons under U.S. control" at Guantanamo "are not confidential and are not subject to the assertion of privileges" by detainees.
That policy memorandum also tells medical personnel they should "convey any information concerning ... the accomplishment of a military or national security mission ... obtained from detainees in the course of treatment to non-medical military or other U.S. personnel who have an apparent need to know the information," the authors found. The only limit on the policy is that caregivers cannot themselves act as interrogators, the authors say. But since the policy calls on caregivers to hand over information they think might be valuable, they are, in effect, part of Guantanamo's surveillance network and "dissolving the Pentagon's purported separation between intelligence gathering and patient care," they write.
"An internal, May 24, 2005, memo from the Army Medical Command, offering guidance to caregivers responsible for detainees, refers to the `interpretation of relevant excerpts from medical records' for the purpose of `assistance with the interrogation process.'"
The authors obtained the memo from a military source.
The article states that at Guantanamo, the "fear-and-anxiety" approach to interrogation was often favored.
"The cruel and degrading measures taken by some, in violation of international human rights law and the laws of war, have become a matter of national shame," Bloche and Marks observe.
"The global political fallout from such abuse may pose more of a threat to U.S. security than any secrets still closely held by shackled internees at Guantanamo Bay," they add.
Canada's only known detainee in Guantanamo Bay is 18-year-old Omar Khadr. Documents filed in a Canadian court this week included two psychiatric assessments that concluded the teenager has a serious mental disorder and is at a high risk for suicide.
Khadr is the second youngest son of Ahmed Said Khadr, who was considered before his death in 2003 to be Canada's highest-ranking Al Qaeda financier with close ties to Osama bin Laden.
Omar Khadr was 15 when he was shot three times and captured at a suspected Al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in July 2002, following a gun battle with U.S. troops.
In February, his U.S. lawyer told reporters the teenager had been used as a human mop to clean urine on the floor and had been beaten, threatened with rape and tied up for hours in painful positions at Guantanamo Bay.
Khadr's Canadian lawyer Dennis Edney said yesterday he has regularly raised concerns with Ottawa about the teen's treatment at Guantanamo and use of his client's medical records.
"This conduct is a blatant disregard by both Canada and the U.S. to recognize the special status international treaties and human rights law accords children and youths," Edney said yesterday.
On Tuesday, the Bush administration rejected a proposal to create an independent commission to investigate abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said the Pentagon has already launched 10 major investigations into allegations of abuse and the system was working well.
Mulugeta Abai, executive director of the Canadian Center for Victims of Torture in Toronto, wasn't surprised by the journal report. "This is practiced globally," he said. "This is very frustrating. A superpower that is considered a leader in many ways is losing its moral authority now, completely."
The New England Journal of Medicine is the second respected journal to criticize U.S. interrogation techniques.
The British medical journal The Lancet reported in August, 2004, that U.S. military doctors violated medical ethics as part of the interrogation regime at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
"Not only were (they) aware of human rights abuses, they were actually complicit in them," University of Minnesota professor Steven Miles, who wrote the report, told the Toronto Star's Sandro Contenta. A Lancet editorial urged health-care workers to "now break their silence."
With files from Michelle Shephard
© Copyright 2005 Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/ |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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U.N. Experts Say They Have Reliable Accounts of Torture at Guantanamo |
by Bradley S. Klapper
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Jun 2005
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GENEVA - U.N. human rights experts said Thursday they have reliable accounts of detainees being tortured at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The experts also said Washington had not responded to their latest request to check on the conditions of terror suspects at the facility in eastern Cuba. That request was made in April.
U.S. officials so far have allowed only the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Guantanamo detainees. The U.N. human rights investigators have been trying to visit since 2002.
The ICRC keeps its findings confidential, reporting them solely to the detaining power, although some of the reports have been leaked by what the ICRC says were third parties.
The U.N. experts would be expected to make a public report.
A U.S. spokeswoman said the U.N. request was being reviewed in Washington.
The experts, who report to U.N. bodies on different human rights issues, said their request for a visit was "based on information, from reliable sources, of serious allegations of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, arbitrary detention, violations of their right to health and their due process rights."
"Many of these allegations have come to light through declassified (U.S.) government documents," they said.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, said his team needed full access to Guantanamo's facilities and prison population, but the United States refused to guarantee him the right to speak to detainees in private.
"We deeply regret that the government of the United States has still not invited us to visit those persons arrested, detained or tried on grounds of alleged terrorism or other violations," the experts said in their statement.
The experts said they were expressing their misgivings because "the lack of a definitive answer despite repeated requests suggests that the United States is not willing to cooperate with the United Nations human rights machinery on this issue."
The experts report to U.N. bodies on torture, physical and mental health, independence of judges and arbitrary detention.
Brooks Robinson, spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to U.N. offices in Geneva, said the response had been delayed because the U.S. review process is "thorough and independent" and involves the Bush administration, Congress and the U.S. judicial system.
"It is true there is no answer yet to their request, but the main point is that their request is being addressed and discussed and reviewed in the United States," Robinson told The Associated Press.
"That process is underway in response to this request."
She noted that U.S. officials consistently have denied violating the principle of humane treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism. The first detainees began arriving at Guantanamo Bay shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
© Copyright 2005 Associated Press
http://www.ap.org |
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Interrogators Cite Doctors' Aid at Guantánamo Prison Camp |
by Neil A. Lewis
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
24 Jun 2005
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WASHINGTON, June 23 - Military doctors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have aided interrogators in conducting and refining coercive interrogations of detainees, including providing advice on how to increase stress levels and exploit fears, according to new, detailed accounts given by former interrogators.
The accounts, in interviews with The New York Times, come as mental health professionals are debating whether psychiatrists and psychologists at the prison camp have violated professional ethics codes. The Pentagon and mental health professionals have been examining the ethical issues involved.
The former interrogators said the military doctors' role was to advise them and their fellow interrogators on ways of increasing psychological duress on detainees, sometimes by exploiting their fears, in the hopes of making them more cooperative and willing to provide information. In one example, interrogators were told that a detainee's medical files showed he had a severe phobia of the dark and suggested ways in which that could be manipulated to induce him to cooperate.
In addition, the authors of an article published by The New England Journal of Medicine this week said their interviews with doctors who helped devise and supervise the interrogation regimen at Guantánamo showed that the program was explicitly designed to increase fear and distress among detainees as a means to obtaining intelligence.
The accounts shed light on how interrogations were conducted and raise new questions about the boundaries of medical ethics in the nation's fight against terrorism.
Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, declined to address the specifics in the accounts. But he suggested that the doctors advising interrogators were not covered by ethics strictures because they were not treating patients but rather were acting as behavioral scientists.
He said that while some health care personnel are responsible for "humane treatment of detainees," some medical professionals "may have other roles," like serving as behavioral scientists assessing the character of interrogation subjects.
The military refused to give The Times permission to interview medical personnel at the isolated Guantánamo camp about their practices, and the medical journal, in an article that criticized the program, did not name the officials interviewed by its authors. The handful of former interrogators who spoke to The Times about the practices at Guantánamo spoke on condition of anonymity; some said they had welcomed the doctors' help.
Pentagon officials said in interviews that the practices at Guantánamo violated no ethics guidelines, and they disputed the conclusions of the medical journal's article, which was posted on the journal's Web site on Wednesday.
Several ethics experts outside the military said there were serious questions involving the conduct of the doctors, especially those in units known as Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, BSCT, colloquially referred to as "biscuit" teams, which advise interrogators.
"Their purpose was to help us break them," one former interrogator told The Times earlier this year.
The interrogator said in a more recent interview that a biscuit team doctor, having read the medical file of a detainee, suggested that the inmate's longing for his mother could be exploited to persuade him to cooperate.
Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and former Army brigadier general in the medical corps, said in an interview that "this behavior is not consistent with our medical responsibility or any of the codes that guide our conduct as doctors."
The use of psychologists and psychiatrists in interrogations prompted the Pentagon to issue a policy statement last week that officials said was supposed to ensure that doctors did not participate in unethical behavior.
While the American Psychiatric Association has guidelines that specifically prohibit the kinds of behaviors described by the former interrogators for their members who are medical doctors, the rules for psychologists are less clear.
Dr. Spencer Eth, a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College and chairman of the ethics committee of the American Psychiatric Association, said in an interview that there was no way that psychiatrists at Guantánamo could ethically counsel interrogators on ways to increase distress on detainees.
But in a statement issued in December, the American Psychological Association said the issue of involvement of its members in "national security endeavors" was new.
Dr. Stephen Behnke, who heads the group's ethics division, said in an interview this week that a committee of 10 members, including some from the military, was meeting in Washington this weekend to discuss the issue.
Dr. Behnke emphasized that the codes did not necessarily allow participation by psychologists in such roles, but rather that the issue had not been dealt with directly before.
"A question has arisen that we in the profession have to address and that is where we are now: is it ethical or is it not ethical?" he said.
Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health matters, said the new Pentagon guidelines made clear that doctors might not engage in unethical conduct. But in a briefing for reporters last week, he declined to say whether the guidelines would prohibit some of the activities described by former interrogators and others. He said the medical personnel "were not driving the interrogations" but were there as consultants.
The guidelines include prohibitions against doctors' participating in abusive treatment, but they all make an exception for "lawful" interrogations. As the military maintains that its interrogations are lawful and that prisoners at Guantánamo are not covered by the Geneva Conventions, those provisions would seem to allow the behavior described by interrogators and the medical journal. The article in the medical journal, by two researchers who interviewed doctors who worked on the biscuit program, says, "Since late 2002, psychiatrists and psychologists have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress, combined with behavior-shaping rewards, to extract actionable intelligence."
The article was written by Dr. M. Gregg Bloche, who teaches at Georgetown University Law School and is a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Jonathan H. Marks, a British lawyer who is a fellow in bioethics at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities.
Dr. Bloche said in an interview that the use of health professionals in devising abusive interrogation strategies was unethical and led to their involvement in violations of international law. Dr. Winkenwerder said on Thursday that the article was "an outrageous distortion" of the medical situation at Guantánamo, according to Reuters news agency.
The article also challenges assertions of military authorities that they have generally maintained the confidentiality of medical records.
The Winkenwerder guidelines make it clear that detainees should have no expectation of privacy, but that medical records may be shared with people who are not in a medical provider relationship with the detainee only under strict circumstances.
Dr. Bloche said such an assertion was contrary to what he had discovered in his research. It is also in conflict with accounts of former interrogators who previously told The Times that they were free to examine any detainee's medical files. After April 2003, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tightened rules on detainee treatment, one interrogator said the records had to be obtained through biscuit team doctors who always obliged.
The former interrogator said the biscuit team doctors usually observed interrogations from behind a one-way mirror, but sometimes were also in the room with the detainee and interrogator.
U.N. Inquiry on Guantánamo
By The New York Times
UNITED NATIONS, June 23 - A four-member team of United Nations human rights experts accused the United States on Thursday of stalling on requests over the past three years to visit detainees at Guantánamo and said it would begin its own investigation without American assistance.
"Such requests were based on information from reliable sources of serious allegations of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees, arbitrary detention, violations of their right to health and their due process rights," the four, all independent authorities who serve the United Nations as fact-finders on rights abuses, said in a statement.
Pierre-Richard Prosper, the United States ambassador for war crimes, said the United States had been unable to meet the fact-finders' deadline to answer its request but intended to keep the matter open.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
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