April 7, 2009
Report Outlines Medical Workers’ Role in Torture
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a “gross breach of medical ethics,” a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded.
Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not 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, the report said.
Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers’ intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that the medical professionals’ role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had “condoned and participated in ill treatment.”
At times, according to the detainees’ accounts, medical workers “gave instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods.”
....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world/07detain.html?_r=2&ref=global-home&pagewanted=printWonder if we have some Mengele jr. in charge of the scumbags (yeah yeah Godwin, fuck it--we torture people) and when that will come out.
Also caught this yesterday, reminiscent of Abu Ghraib, but this time with the CIA mugging for the camera with tortured prisoners:
April 04, 2009
Destroyed CIA videotapes. Per Marcy's point here about this: that Foggo may be in a mood to talk, if he knows anything.
I'm told that there were three people in the room, e.g. two witnesses, to Goss allegedly authorizing a call be made to the station involved (Thailand) to order them to destroy the interrogation tapes: both then director of the national clandestine service Jose Rodriguez as well as his then deputy. Rodriguez' then deputy was described as "a senior ranking clandestine service official close to Goss" whose name is not well known, who has since retired from the Agency and gone to work for a large private sector company.
The contact says referring to the other person allegedly in the room when the decision on the tapes was made, Rodriguez' deputy: "I know for a fact that he was in the office when Goss said 'Get rid of the videotapes' and he said, 'Jose, it is up to you to do it.' He directed this guy
, 'You call the station and tell them to do it.' ... My point is, Goss walked away from that" point "on - and they ... carried out what told to do."
According to the contact, Goss, after hearing Rodriguez' and his deputy's argument for why the tapes would be problematic if they got out, ordered Rodriguez' deputy to make the call to the station in Thailand to get rid of the tapes, and directed Jose to inform the committees. "Goss told Jose to tell the committees and told the other guy station invoved and destroy the tapes."
Apparently there was a currently serving senior CIA officer on one or more of the tapes, whose name I have redacted because he is still serving, who was mugging on the camera. "What I heard is that deliberately got on the TV camera. He's smiling, making gestures to one of the guys behind him..."
Source says "Jose , I know who to protect: that - his ugly face on the video - smiling on the video of waterboarding."
....
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/009078.html
She links in to:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/02/what-does-dusty-foggo-know-about-the-torture-tapes/
which is also worth a read (Foggo probably going to turn on Goss shortly it sounds like)
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