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Report links medics to CIA jail torture
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"I was put on what looked like a hospital bed . . ."

DENIS STAUNTON in Washington
MEDICAL PERSONNEL oversaw and sometimes participated in the torture of captives at secret CIA prisons, violating medical ethics and international law, according to a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Red Cross investigators, who interviewed 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guanánamo Bay from the secret prisons in 2006, concluded that the CIA detention programme was “inhuman”. Health workers monitored prisoners during waterboarding, a form of controlled suffocation, apparently to make sure they did not drown.

They were present when detainees were held in very cold cells, shackled by their arms to the ceiling and repeatedly slammed into walls, according to the report.

One medical worker is quoted as telling a detainee: “I look after your body only because we need you for information.”

The ICRC report, which was sent to the CIA in February 2007, was published on the website of the New York Review of Books by journalism professor Mark Danner.

It documents the treatment of 14 detainees, who were arrested in different countries and held in secret prisons outside the US for up to four years, but the US government has acknowledged that many more prisoners passed through the CIA “black sites”.
Lees verder: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0408/1224244213092.html