From Britain’s The Independent, 27 April 2011, “US doctors ‘hid signs of torture’ at Guantanamo“:
US government doctors who cared for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deliberately concealed or ignored evidence that their patients were being tortured, the first official study of its kind has found.
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A detailed review of the medical records and case files of nine Guantanamo inmates has concluded that medical personnel at the US detention centre were complicit in suppressing evidence that would demonstrate systematic torture of the inmates.
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The review is published in an online scientific journal, PLoS Medicine, and is the first peer-reviewed study analysing the behaviour of the doctors in charge of Guantanamo inmates who were subjected to “enhanced interrogation” techniques that a decade ago had been classed by the US government as torture.
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Vincent Iacopino, senior medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights, and Brigadier General Stephen Xenakis, a retired US Army medical officer, had access to the medical records and case files while acting on behalf of defence lawyers.
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They concluded that no doctor could have failed to notice the medical signs and symptoms of the extreme interrogation techniques and unauthorised assaults that other physicians would recognise as torture, such as severe beatings resulting in bone fractures, sexual assaults, mock executions, and simulated drowning by “waterboarding”.
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“The findings in these nine cases indicate that medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the US Department of Defence neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm,” the authors of the study concluded. “The full extent of medical complicity in US torture practices will not be known until there is a thorough, impartial investigation including relevant classified information. We believe that, until such time as such an investigation is undertaken, and those responsible for torture are held accountable, the ethical integrity of medical and other healing professions remains compromised.”
Nancy Pelosi, (then) House Speaker, Tim Dickinson interview published in the 5 March 2009 issue of Rolling Stone:
The last administration didn’t place much of an emphasis on accountability. Sen. Patrick Leahy called yesterday for a “truth commission” to investigate abuses of power under Bush, and Rep. John Conyers has sponsored a similar bill. Do you support such a process?
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I support what Mr. Conyers is doing. I look at it from the standpoint of a separation of powers. We believe there was a politicizing of the Justice Department under President Bush, that conversations took place at the White House that supported that activity. We asked for those documents, but we did not receive them. We asked for those people to testify, but they did not come. That, for us, is a violation of the Constitution. So what we’re talking about is bigger than any specific activity. We’re talking about contempt of Congress — Article One, the legislative branch.
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I also support what President Obama has said: “My approach is to look forward, recognizing that no one is above the law.” Both of those approaches are correct. It is also correct for us, as the first branch of government, to say, “The White House, no matter who is in it, cannot violate the Constitution by not being accountable to the Congress.” […] __
But Conyers is asking for more than that. He wants subpoena power to investigate potential abuses of war powers, to force people to testify about torture and find out what was done at Guantánamo and the CIA’s black sites. Do you foresee a scenario in which senior members of the Bush administration are actually prosecuted?
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I think so. The American people deserve answers… Under Bush, the Justice Department told the U.S. attorney not to prosecute the case. So the beat goes on — it just gets worse. We don’t know what will happen, because they’ve delayed it a long time.
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I’m talking more about the level of a Donald Rumsfeld — people who authorized torture and greenlighted the kidnapping and rendition of innocent people.
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I didn’t like their policies, which is why we needed to win the election — to get them out of power. But I don’t know what the evidence is against them on any specific charge. When you have a truth-and-reconciliation commission . . . look, I’m still fighting the bombing of Cambodia. I still have my gripes with the administration that bombed Cambodia before you were born, so I think it’s important to bring these things out. If you have a case against someone, you bring a case.
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