Red Cross Report Sparks Scandal on Torture Doctors & Psychologists

The publication of the ICRC full report on CIA abuse of prisoners has rightfully sparked a new media scandal, summarized by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post, on the collaboration of medical professionals in the U.S. government's torture program. This collaboration has been covered for years by writers and activists like Steven Miles, Stephen Soldz, Katherine Eban, among many others.

Organizations, too, have been active in trying to expose this deadly collaboration, including the ACLU, Human Rights First, and Physicians for Human Rights. What follows is a press release from PHR, responding to the new ICRC revelations.

For Immediate Release: April 7, 2009

Contact: Jonathan Hutson, jhutson@phrusa.org, Cell: 857-919-5130

In Wake of ICRC Report, Health Professionals Must Be Held Accountable for Torture

Physicians for Human Rights responds to the publication of a long-secret report by International Committee of the Red Cross which concludes that health professionals who participated in interrogations in CIA secret detention centers committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases participated in torture.

(Cambridge, MA) The full disclosure of a confidential International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on CIA treatment of detainees is confirmation of what Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has been alleging for years. Health professionals violated ethical duties by participating in the torture and abuse of detainees in US custody. PHR has long demanded a full investigation into the role health professionals played in detainee treatment. PHR again calls upon health professional associations to support a non-partisan commission of inquiry.

“It is time for the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and others to demand a nonpartisan commission to investigate these crimes,” said Frank Donaghue, Chief Executive Officer of PHR. “The associations must sanction any of their membership found to have violated their professional ethics.”

“The Bush Administration weaponized medicine by using health professionals to break the bodies and minds of detainees,” stated John Bradshaw, PHR’s Washington Director. “Congress must act to restore medical ethics by finally authorizing a non-partisan commission to probe these crimes.”

PHR helped create the ethical prohibitions against health professional participation in national security interrogations. Consistent with previous PHR findings, the ICRC report concludes that “the interrogation process is contrary to international law and the participation of health personnel in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics.” The ICRC report also finds that “their primary purpose appears to have been to serve the interrogation process, and not the patient. In so doing the health personnel have condoned, and participated in ill-treatment.”

In a report released last year, Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact, former detainees medically evaluated by PHR reported similar instances of medical complicity in torture. Hafez, an Iraqi detainee who was held at Abu Ghraib, reports that his arm was dislocated during an abusive interrogation. He states that an individual, whom he believed was a doctor, put his arm back in place and told the interrogators to “continue”.

Since 2005, PHR has documented the systematic use of psychological torture by the US during its interrogations of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Additionally, PHR has worked to mobilize the health professional community, particularly the professional associations, such as the American Medical Association, to adopt strong ethical prohibitions against direct participation in interrogations. PHR is a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Readers interested in more information about the role doctors and other medical or psychological professionals have played as part in the U.S. torture gulag will find Steven Miles just released, second edition of his well-received book, Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors, an amazing compendium of information and analysis.