A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals that physicians with the CIA’s Office of Medical Services (OMS) played an even greater role in facilitating the torture of detainees than was previously recognized.

As described in the (subscription required) study, “In 2003, partially in response to a CIA Inspector General investigation that questioned the use of enhanced interrogation methods and criticized the agency’s failure to consult with OMS about the risks to detainees of waterboarding, OMS physicians assumed another role, providing opinions to the agency and lawyers whether the techniques used would be expected to cause severe pain or suffering and thus constitute torture.”

This advisory function came in addition to the physicians’ previous involvement in the torture of detainees through performing medical evaluations before and after interrogation, monitoring waterboarding sessions, and collecting information on the effectiveness and risks of various techniques.

The study, titled “Roles of CIA Physicians in Enhanced Interrogation and Torture of Detainees,” was authored by Leonard S. Rubinstein, the president of Physicians for Human Rights, and Brig. Gen. (ret.) Stephen N. Xenakis, a former Army psychiatrist who is now with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights. It is based on a previously secret document from 2004, laying out OMS guidelines for detainee interrogation, which was released by the Obama administration.

In an article for Harper’s, human rights lawyer Scott Horton notes that the JAMA study makes it apparent that the OMS physicians did not merely offer a medical opinion as to what constituted torture but “gave their bosses exactly what was expected of them: a green light to torture.”

The study emphasizes that even though OMS approved the use of enhanced interrogation methods subject to “medical limitations,” those limitations took no account of actual pain and suffering and were merely calculated to minimize the chances of doing permanent physical damage.

They “included durational limits for exposure to a specified temperature, either up to the time hypothermia would be expected to develop or on evidence of hypothermia; body weight loss of 10% or evidence of significant malnutrition as a result of dietary restrictions; and exposure to noise just under the decibel levels associated with permanent hearing loss. Stress positions were permitted for up to 48 hours provided the detainee’s hands were no higher than the head, weight was borne by lower extremities, and preexisting injuries were not aggravated. … The OMS guidelines also advised that emergency resuscitation equipment be available when waterboarding was used.”

Although the guidelines specify that “the detainee’s physical condition must be such that these interventions will not have lasting effect,” they ignore professional literature on the potential health risks of the techniques, citing instead such sources as “‘Wilderness Medicine’ 4th Ed., Ch 6 — Accidental Hypothermia.”

“The duplicity in this affair is amazingly circular.,” Horton writes. “The Justice Department’s torture lawyers relied on the CIA’s torture doctors for the conclusion that specific techniques did not produce ‘severe pain’ that ran afoul of the criminal law prohibition on torture; the CIA doctors relied on the Justice Department lawyers for the same conclusion. It looks like a compact, and an alert prosecutor would no doubt call it a joint criminal enterprise. … It’s hard to see at this point whose behavior was the more ethically odious, though evidence suggests that both engaged in professional misconduct so egregious as to warrant formal disciplinary proceedings.”

“The torture doctors expect to have their identities protected, and thus to escape the natural consequences of their gross professional misconduct,” Horton concludes. “This helps us understand why senior figures in the intelligence community are today ferociously pressuring the Justice Department to criminalize anyone who attempts to discover the identities of those involved. They assert that those identified would be terrorist targets. In fact, those who are unmasked face likely professional ethics proceedings, as well as the long-term risk of criminal prosecution, particularly if they ever venture beyond the borders of the United States.”

WITNESS AGAINST TORTURE

Press Release: For Immediate Release

January 21, 2010

Contact: Frida Berrigan, 347-683-4928, frida.berrigan@gmail.com
Matt Daloisio, 201-264-4424, daloisio@earthlink.net

42 Arrested at U.S. Capitol in Day of Action to Denounce Obama’s Broken Promises on Guantanamo, America’s Broken Laws, and the Breaking of Lives by Torture

Washington, DC: In a dramatic protest, 42 activists with Witness Against Torture were arrested this afternoon at the U.S. Capitol. Most of the arrestees had been fasting since January 11th.

The protest, which comes on the eve of the since-voided deadline President Obama had set for closing the prison camp at Guantanamo, was part of nationwide set of actions today that included dozens of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans lobbying Congress; a campaign by human rights organizations – with the support of the rock superband, Coldplay – to flood Twitter with the “CloseGitmo” message; and, a press conference held by retired Generals at the National Press Club.

Those arrested on the Capitol steps held banners reading “Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives.” Inside the Capitol, 14 activists performed a “memorial service” for the three men whose deaths at Guantanamo in 2006 were initially reported as suicides and callously described as “acts of asymmetrical warfare” by military officials. New reports provide strong evidence that the men may have been tortured to death at a CIA secret prison in Guantanamo.

The ceremony brought the names of the men– Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani– into the Capitol Rotunda, where deceased presidents have lay in state. “We perform this ceremony to recognize the humanity of those whose lives have been broken by our government’s policies of torture and indefinite detention,” says Jerica Arents of Chicago, Illinois, one of those arrested in the Capitol.

Witness Against Torture has called for an immediate, independent investigation of the deaths, as it has called for the criminal investigation of all those who allegedly designed, executed, and carried out torture policies.

Most of the 42 arrested at the Capitol did not carry identification, taking instead the names of men at Guantanamo through arrest and processing. “Taking the name of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif is a necessary and real way of bringing his story to Congress,” says Joshua Brollier, a co-coordinator with Voices for Creative Nonviolence in Chicago, Illinois. “Adnan was tortured and continues to be held after eight years without charge or trial. It boggles the mind and breaks the heart. It’s time for Congress and the Obama administration to make and fulfill a plan for his release.” Brollier and others from Voices will continue in Washington through February 2, participating in the Peaceable Assembly Campaign to pressure Obama administration and Congress to explore alternatives to U.S. militarism.

The actions at the Capitol followed a march of “Guantanamo prisoners” dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods that began at the White House and stopped at the Supreme Court before going to Capitol grounds, home to the U.S. Congress. “Congress has played a horrible role in refusing to check the power of the president and in supporting torture,” commented Matt Daloisio of New York City, a Witness Against Torture organizer. “But it was important to pass by all of the government institutions that have failed to uphold justice and protect the rule of law.”

Members of Witness Against Torture began a Fast for Justice on Monday, January 11– the date in 2002 when the first men were brought to Guantanamo under the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” One-hundred fifty people from around the country joined the 12 day fast, which will end on Friday, January 22, the promised day for Guantanamo’s closure.

“We were so hopeful last year,” says Christine Gaunt, a grandmother and third generation farmer from Grinnell, Iowa, who was arrested at the Capitol. “But Obama has broken his promise to close Guantanamo. I am acting today because I am horrified and ashamed that this illegal prison continues to exist, and that those responsible for torture have not been held to account. I am using my body to demand that my government stop the insanity of torture and illegal detention.”

Witness Against Torture is a grassroots movement that came into being in December 2005 when 24 activists walked through Cuba to the Guantanamo base to condemn the prison camp and torture policies. Since then, it has engaged in public education, community outreach, and non-violent direct action.

To learn more visit, www.witnesstorture.org

AFP secured an interview on Monday with Mohamed Saleban Bare (known to the Pentagon as Mohammed Sulaymon Barre), the Somali refugee, released from Guantánamo at the weekend with eleven other men (including another Somali, Ismail Mahmoud Muhammad), who ran a money transfer operation for the Somali diaspora in Karachi, Pakistan, until he was seized in a house raid on November 1, 2001. The organization he worked for was, in the eyes of the US authorities, involved with another money transfer company that had ties to the 9/11 hijackers, even though the 9/11 Commission concluded over five years that this was not the case.

Speaking to AFP reporter Mustafa Haji Abdinur in a hotel in Bare’s home town of Hargeisa, the capital of the northern breakaway state of Somaliland, Bare declared, “Guantánamo Bay is like hell on Earth.” He added, “I don’t feel normal yet but I thank Allah for keeping me alive and free from the physical and mental sufferings of some of my friends. Some of my colleagues in the prison lost their sight, some lost their limbs and others ended up mentally disturbed. I’m OK compared to them.”

Bare told Abdinur that he was “in good physical health,” but the reporter explained that the 44-year old “looks dazed, speaks very softly and walks gingerly.”

After explaining that, at the time he was seized, he had been in Pakistan for many years “with several relatives who had fled the violence in Somalia and were hoping to find asylum in a western state,” he stated that he was held in Pakistan for about four months, and then transferred to US custody in Afghanistan.

“At Bagram and Kandahar, the situation was harsh but when we were transferred to Guantánamo the torture tactics changed,” he explained. “They use a kind of psychological torture that kills you mentally.” This, he added, “included depriving prisoners of sleep for at least four nights in a row and feeding them once a day with only a biscuit.” He also explained, “And in the cold they let you sleep without a blanket. Some of the inmates face harsher torture, including with electricity and beating.”

Abdinur noted that Bare was “reluctant to answer questions about his alleged ties with Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiya, a Somali Islamist movement which produced many of the current leaders of the Al Qaeda-linked Shebab,” which was, I think, understandable given that he had finally been released after eight years’ detention without charge or trial by the US authorities, who would not have done so had there been any evidence of such an involvement.

In response to the questioning, he stated instead, “Guantánamo is a place of humiliation for Muslims. All the inmates are Muslims but they (Americans) claim the prison is for terrorists. Why don’t they arrest non-Muslims belonging to these so-called terror groups?”

He also stated, “No human rights convention stands in Guantánamo. Interrogators force inmates to confess crimes they didn’t commit by torturing them and sullying their religion. They would throw Korans into the toilet and raise the volume of their music during prayers.”

In conclusion, he explained that the US authorities had “never told him why he was arrested,” stating, “They used to ask many questions, most of them relating to my background like what I was doing in Somalia and about the people I know. It was all about suspicions and not a clear case.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.