Doctors aided in detainee abuse, journal says : Melbourne Indymedia

Doctors aided in detainee abuse, journal says
Pentagon denies report of tailored torture
Joe Stephens, Washington Post

Thursday, January 6, 2005

Washington -- U.S. Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers, perhaps participating in torture, according to a report in today's edition of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

Medical personnel helped tailor interrogations to the physical and mental conditions of individual detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the report claims. It says that medical workers gave interrogators access to patient medical files and that psychiatrists and other physicians collaborated with interrogators and guards who in turn deprived detainees of sleep, restricted them to diets of bread and water, and exposed them to extremes of heat and cold.

"Clearly, the medical personnel who helped to develop and execute aggressive counter-resistance plans thereby breached the laws of war," says the four-page article.

"The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it."

The report was written by M. Gregg Bloche, a law professor at Georgetown University and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, and by Jonathan H. Marks, a London barrister who is a bioethics fellow at Georgetown University Law Center and Johns Hopkins. It is based on interviews with more than two dozen military personnel and on a review of documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.

Pentagon officials said Wednesday that the report was inaccurate and misrepresented the positions and acts of military officials. Doctors did not violate the Geneva Conventions, said William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Some functioned as consultants to intelligence officers but never acted unethically, he said.

The report in the medical journal purports to add new facts to the public record and put others in context. But it is most significant because it adds to a chorus of concern expressed by respected medical institutions, said Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

"The New England Journal of Medicine plays a unique role in serving as a moral beacon for the health profession; when they take it on, it's important," Caplan said.

Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, a Boston-based advocacy organization, added: "This underscores the pressing need for a transparent and full investigation, which the Pentagon has consistently refused to initiate."

The Geneva Conventions forbid the use of abusive techniques in questioning prisoners of war. Tactics used in Iraq and Cuba were "transparently coercive," the article asserts. The report discloses that the Army's surgeon general is developing new rules for medical personnel who work with detainees.

Meanwhile, the armed forces on Wednesday ordered an investigation into allegations that terrorism suspects were abused at Guantanamo and appointed a one-star general to head the probe.

The U.S. Southern Command named Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow, deputy commander of its U.S. Army South wing at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to lead the investigation. The move comes six weeks after an FBI memo detailed reports from 26 agents saying they had witnessed interrogation excesses at Guantanamo.

The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.