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| Sunday, 22 August 2004 |
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US military doctors abused Iraqi prisoners Baghdad, Aug 20 (Prensa Latina) U.S. military doctors in Iraq were involved in the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, by violating medical ethics and human rights, the Al Jazeera News Service reported Friday. In a scathing analysis of the behavior of military doctors, nurses and medics, University of Minnesota professor Steven Miles has called for an official investigation into the role played by doctors and other medical staff in the abuse scandal. Miles quotes evidence that the U.S. military doctors falsified death certificates to cover up homicides, hid evidence of beatings and revived a prisoner so as to torture him more. No reports of abuses were initiated by medical staff until the official investigation into Abu Ghraib began, he found. "The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations," Miles said in this week"s edition of The Lancet medical journal. "Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison." The analysis doesn"t say how many doctors were involved in the abuse or how widespread the problem of medical complicity was, aspects that Miles said he is now investigating. Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq, said the incidents Miles described came primarily from the Pentagon"s own investigation of the abuses. "Many of these cases remain under investigation and charges will be brought against any individual where there is evidence of abuse," said Johnson. Moreover, two military officials in Washington said Thursday that a high-level Army inquiry will cite medical personnel who learned about the abuse at Abu Ghraib however did not report it up to higher level officials. Photographs showing Iraqi prisoners being abused and sexually humiliated by U.S. troops in Iraq have sparked worldwide outrage. Although the conduct of soldiers has been scrutinized, the role of medical staff in the scandal has received relatively little attention. "The detaining power"s health personnel are the first and often the last line of defense against human rights abuses. Their failure to assume that role emphasizes to the prisoner how utterly beyond humane appeal they are," Miles stressed. Miles compiled evidence from U.S. congressional hearings, sworn statements of detainees and soldiers, medical journal accounts and press reports to build a picture of physician complicity, and in isolated cases active involvement of medical personnel in the abuse at the Baghdad prison, as well as in Afghanistan and at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. |
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