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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (24047)	6/24/2005 6:32:39 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 361711

This is a surprise -_US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo and Iraq, Afghanistan: UN source. 2 hours, 34 minutes ago GENEVA (AFP) - Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said. news.yahoo.com The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity. The US mission to the UN institutions in Geneva was unavailable for comment on the report late Friday.. "They are no longer trying to duck this, and have respected their obligation to inform the UN," the Committee member told AFP, adding that the US described the incidents as "isolated acts" carried out by low-ranking members of the military who were being punished. "They will have to explain themselves" to the committee, the member said. "Nothing should be kept in the dark." UN sources said it was the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities. The Committee, which monitors respect for the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, is gathering information from the US ahead of hearings in May 2006. Signatories of the convention are expected to submit to scrutiny of their implementation of the 1984 convention and to provide information to the Committee. The document from Washington will not be formally made public until the hearings. "They haven't avoided anything in their answers, whether concerning prisoners in Iraq, in Afghanistan or Guantanamo, and other accusations of mistreatment and of torture," the Committee member said. "They said it was a question of isolated cases, that there was nothing systematic and that the guilty were in the process of being punished." The US report said that those involved were low-ranking members of the military and that their acts were not approved by their superiors, the member added. The US has faced criticism from UN human rights experts and international groups for mistreatment of detainees -- some of whom died in custody -- in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly during last year's prisoner abuse scandal surrounding the Abu Ghraib facility there.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (24047)	6/24/2005 6:32:40 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361711

Guantanamo doctors under attack By Matthew Davis BBC News, Washington Prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba There is concern about the possible violation of medical ethics The US military has defended the role of doctors in refining the coercive interrogation tactics being used on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon said no inquiry had produced "credible evidence" physicians had taken part in the "inhumane treatment of detainees". But it admitted "behavioural science consultants" were helping interrogators exploit prisoners' weaknesses. The news comes amid fresh concern over possible violations of medical ethics. Authors of a report in the New England Journal of Medicine say that since late 2002, psychiatrists and psychologists have been part of a programme designed to increase fear and distress among prisoners as a means to getting intelligence. Behaviour science consultants may observe, but not conduct or direct, interrogations Bryan Whitman Pentagon spokesman They say there are "strong indications" that Behavioural Science Consultation Teams - known as "biscuit" teams - have had access to detainees' personal health information. "Wholesale rejection of clinical confidentiality at Guantanamo also runs contrary to settled ethical precepts," their report notes. Meanwhile, a report in the New York Times quoted former interrogators saying they had received specific guidance on how to increase prisoners' stress levels. In one example, interrogators were told that a detainee's medical files showed he had a severe phobia of the dark and suggested ways that could be manipulated to induce him to co-operate, the newspaper reported. news.bbc.co.uk