Army Doctors Implicated in Prisoner Abuse
The New England Journal of Medicine has released an article by a Georgetown University law professor implicating army doctors in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Actually, this isn't news as it was reported last August in a British medical journal--we wrote about it here. From today's Washington Post:
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 an article in today's edition of the 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 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the article. 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 extreme heat and cold.
The article finds:
"The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it."
Did Alberto Gonzales approve of their assistance? Did he know about it? Will anyone ask him?
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