Red Cross Says Medical Officers Overseeing “Interrogations” Violated Ethics

Joby Warrick and Julie Tate at the Washington Post report that Mark Danner of the New York Review of Books posted the Red Cross’ secret February 17, 2007 report (pdf) to CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo. Danner’s account, like Warren and Tate’s earlier work, reveals what the Red Cross saw being practiced by Doctors and other medical professionals on so-called high value detainees at US "black site" prisons.

And what they saw (pdf) – medical torture – is very ugly.

For certain methods, notably suffocation by water, the health personnel were allegedly directly participating in the infliction of the ill treatment. . . .

Other detainees who were shackled in a stress standing position for long periods of time were monitored by health personnel who in some instances recommended stopping the method. . . but in other instance recommended its continuation, with adjustments.

Gee, looks like a whole lotta my medical torture "colleagues" never read the UN Convention against Torture.

PART I

Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

For my fellow healers who somehow missed their obligations under international law, the Red Cross spelled them out:

Medical officers who oversaw interrogations of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture. . . .

Duh.

Update: Froomkin has more.

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2. Military Interrogations: Torture, Hyprocrisy Pre-Date 9/11
3. Kent Conrad Calls Blue Cross/Blue Shield North Dakota “Irresponsible”
4. What She Said: You Don’t Have to Sell Your Soul to Blue Cross
5. Florida Doctor Who Distributed Racist Email is a Tea Party Organizer, Called Health Care Reform “Medical Fascism”