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Red Cross: Medical ethics violated at Gitmo

Medical professionals who monitored CIA interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility violated medical ethics, the International Committee of the Red Cross says in a report.
/ Source: The Associated Press

Medical personnel who monitored the harsh CIA interrogations of "high value" prisoners at secret overseas sites violated medical ethics, the International Committee of the Red Cross says in a report.

The 2007 report, based on interviews with 14 detainees who were held at the secret sites before being transferred in September 2006 to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said the health personnel monitored detainees as they were subjected to techniques such as waterboarding — which simulates drowning — and prolonged stress positions.

In some cases, the Red Cross reported, medical staff recommended stopping the treatment; in others they "recommended its continuation, but with adjustments." The report said the 14 detainees were interviewed by Red Cross officials at the Guantanamo camp in October 2006.

One detainee told the Red Cross that while still being held at a secret site, "a health person threatened that medical care would be conditional upon cooperation with the interrogators."

Report: Interrogation process flawed
The report said the health personnel's "primary purpose appears to have been to serve the interrogation process, and not the patient."

"The interrogation process is contrary to international law," the Red Cross said, "and the participation in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics."

The confidential 43-page report was published Monday on the Web site of The New York Review of Books. Journalist Mark Danner, who obtained the report, revealed some of its findings last month in an article in the Review.

The neutral, Swiss-based ICRC is designated by the Geneva Conventions on warfare to visit prisoners of war and other people detained by an occupying power, to ensure countries respect their obligations under the 1949 accords. The ICRC was granted private access by the Bush administration to the 14 prisoners after they were moved from secret interrogation sites and prisons to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

The report was written shortly after then-President George W. Bush publicly declared that the United States does not and had not tortured detainees at secret CIA prisons known as "black sites."

The Obama administration has ordered the sites closed and has restricted the CIA to using only those interrogation methods approved for use by the U.S. military until a complete review of the program is conducted.