The Role of Health Professionals in Detainee Interrogation

We recover a piece by Santiago Wills  originally appeared in The Atlantic in November 2012 on the responsibilities held by US health professionals (specially psychiatrists but also nurses and medical doctors) in military interrogations which could be considered under universal standards as torture.We inserted further hyperlinks and embedded a November 2013 Democracy Now video on the issue and a trailer for the Doctors of the dark side a documentary by Martha Davis  . As usual we have added some background and updated info from this blog, our twitter (@onadaexpansiva) and external sources.

A teenager tortured at Guantanamo, and the stalled legislation to ensure clinicians "first, do no harm"

On December 25, 2003, Mohammed Jawad, an Afghani teenager held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, repeatedly banged his head against the metal structures of his cell in an effort to kill himself. The dull echoes of the blows attracted the prison's guards. As they reached the cell, Jawad struck the solid surface once again. Even though suicide is prohibited in Islam, Jawad, a devout Muslim, thought that perhaps he could be forgiven in this case. The situation had slipped beyond his control, he told his attorney Eric Montalvo years later. 

New HRW report on torture under the Bush Administration.

 A good report by Human Rights Watch on toture and ill treatment on detainees under the Bush administration just came out, naming and establishing the responsibility of high-ranked officials in the commission of what ammounts to war crime .

We shall like to highlight the appendix, focusing on legal proceedings in foreign countries regarding US detainees treatment (France, Germany, Spain...) and remind everyone that an Spanish Journalist, Jose Couso, was killed by US troops in Baghdad in April 8th  2003;US authorities  blocked all attempts by Spanish  judicial authorities to investigate his death

Here is the slightly reduced press release and access to the report:

Getting Away with Torture

The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainee

The report,  Getting away with torture, presents substantial information warranting criminal investigations of Bush and senior administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet, for ordering practices such as “waterboarding,” the use of secret CIA prisons, and the transfer of detainees to countries where they were tortured.