Doctors - Yes, It Was Torture

By Cernig

McClatchy have been doing an excellent reporting job of late with their series "Guantanamo: Beyond The Law" which among other horror stories has confirmed that detainees at Gitmo were often wrongly accused innocents and that the International Red Cross was kept in the dark about detainees locations and abusive treatment, in flagrantly criminal violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Well, now you can add this into the mix - a team of medical experts examined eleven former detainees and found that, in their expert opinions, they had experienced severe pain and long-term suffering - the very definition of torture by international and U.S. law.

Cambridge, MA. (PRWEB) June 17, 2008 - A team of doctors and psychologists convened by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) to conduct intensive clinical evaluations of 11 former detainees held in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay has found that these men suffered torture and ill-treatment by U.S. personnel, which resulted in severe pain and long-term disability. The men were ultimately released from U.S. custody without charge or explanation.

"The horrific consequences of U.S. detention and interrogation policy are indelibly written on the bodies and minds of the former detainees in scars, debilitating injuries, humiliating memories and haunting nightmares," states Dr. Allen Keller, Director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture and a contributor to PHR's report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by U.S. Personnel and Its Impact. "Physical and psychological evidence clearly supports the detainees' first-hand accounts of cruelty, inhuman treatment, degradation, and torture."

"The poignant case studies focus on the profound and lasting consequences of cruelty at the hands of U.S. personnel," said Farnoosh Hashemian, MPH, PHR Research Associate and lead author of the report. "The detainees suffer permanent hearing loss, persistent and debilitating pain in limbs and joints, major depressive disorder, severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorders, such as panic attacks."

The report also calls for full accountability for these war crimes, as it bloody well should. Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen in the U.S. It will be left up to other nations, if they will, to uphold America's supposed standards.