Secret Report Reveals Role of Medical Personnel in Torture at CIA Black Sites

by Liliana Segura, AlterNet

The report describes "three principal roles" played by medical professionals, including "monitoring the ongoing ill-treatment" of prisoners.

Medical professionals working for the CIA played a central role in the "ill-treatment" of terror suspects in U.S. custody overseas, according to a previously confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The 2007 report describes interviews with 14 "high value detainees" who were transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006, revealing the full extent of complicity and participation by medical personnel in a wide and grisly range of torture methods inflicted upon them. Listed in the table of contents of the 41-page report, these methods included "suffocation by water," "prolonged stress standing," "beatings by use of a collar," "beating and kicking," "confinement in a box," "prolonged nudity," and more.

The ICRC report describes "three principal roles" played by medical professionals in the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody. "Firstly, there was a direct role in monitoring the ongoing ill-treatment which, in some instances, involved the health personnel directly participating while certain methods were used."

Secondly, there was a role in performing a medical check just prior to, and just after,each transfer. Finally, there was the provision of healthcare, to treat both the direct consequences of ill-treatment detailed in previous sections, and to treat any natural ailments that arose during the prolonged periods of detention.

According to the report, which was obtained by journalist Mark Danner -- who first published excerpts last month and has now published its full contents on the website of the New York Review of Books -- certain methods required more active participation by medical professions. For example, in subjecting prisoners to "suffocation by water," "it was alleged that health personnel actively monitored a detainee's oxygen saturation using what, from the description of the detainee of a device placed over the finger, appeared to be a pulse oxymeter."

"Mr. Khaled Shaik Mohammed alleged that on several occasions the suffocation method was stopped on the intervention of a health person who was present in the room each time this procedure was used."

KSM, one of the few prisoners who the U.S. government has actually acknowledged having waterboarding, described his experience to ICRC staff.

I would be strapped to a special bed, which can be rotated into a vertical position. A cloth would be placed over my face. Water was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe. This obviously could only be done for one or two minutes at a time. The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about 1 hour.

Abu Zubaydah, whose torture has also been widely documented, described it as follows:

I was put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds caused severe pain. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to a horizontal position and the same torture carried out with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled without success to breathe. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress.

The conclusion by the ICRC was that the interrogation of prisoners at U.S. "black sites" certainly "constituted torture." But additionally, "the alleged participation of health personnel in the interrogation process and, either directly or indirectly, in the infliction of ill-treatment constituted a gross breach of medical ethics and, in some cases, amounted to participation in torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

Indeed, the presence of medical professionals seemed itself to augment the psychological torture. "One detainee,who did not wish his name to be transmitted to the authorities, alleged that a health person threatened that medical care would be conditional upon cooperation with the interrogators." Another recalled being told: "I look after your body only because we need you for information."

Liliana Segura is a staff writer and editor of AlterNet's Rights and Liberties and War on Iraq Special Coverage.

"Secret" Red Cross Report Confirms More Torture at CIA Black Sites

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Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet

Prisoners described being put in dog collars, having their heads slammed against walls, and forced inside "coffin-like" boxes.

A front page story in today's Washington Post reveals that a "secret report" by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the CIA's "black sites" has confirmed that the Bush administration used gross interrogation methods in its overseas prisons that "constituted torture" and violated the Geneva Conventions.

With the exception of five copies of the report that were passed on to the CIA and the White House in 2007, the findings were kept secret by the Red Cross "to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts."

But journalist Mark Danner obtained excerpts of the report and has published them in the new edition of the New York Review of Books.

The report draws from Red Cross interviews in 2006 with 14 prisoners held in isolation at foreign CIA prisons, men who "gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning."

"Often using the detainee's own words," writes the Post, "the report offers a harrowing view of conditions at the secret prisons, where prisoners were told they were being taken 'to the verge of death and back,' according to one excerpt. During interrogations, the captives were routinely beaten, doused with cold water and slammed head-first into walls. Between sessions, they were stripped of clothing, bombarded with loud music, exposed to cold temperatures, and deprived of sleep and solid food for days on end. Some detainees described being forced to stand for days, with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers."

"On a daily basis … a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets." He added: "I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation."

The report also contains descriptions of the prisoner Abu Zubaida, whose torture has been previously documented.

"Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said."

"The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the ICRC.

After he was removed from a small box, he said, he was strapped to what looked like a hospital bed and waterboarded. "A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," Abu Zubaida said.

After breaks to allow him to recover, the waterboarding continued.

The Washington Post has more.

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