Red Cross Accuses U.S. Medical Personnel of Aiding Torture

Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Demonstratin of Waterboarding

While CIA agents tortured suspected terrorists at secret facilities, medical personnel were not only present, but assisted in the interrogations, thus committing a “gross breach of medical ethics,” according to a previously confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The information that the Red Cross collected came from testimony by 14 prisoners who were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006. Investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the CIA monitored prisoners while they were being subjected to waterboarding to make sure they didn’t drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls. According to the Red Cross, “In the case of the alleged participation of health personnel in the detention and interrogation of the fourteen detainees, their primary purpose appears to have been to serve the interrogation process, and not the patient.” The report concluded 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.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
 
The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means (by Mark Danner, New York Review of Books)
ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody (International Committee of the Red Cross) (pages 21-23) (PDF)

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