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A new report has revealed how the CIA ordered military doctors to break their oath and design new torture methods in Guantanamo Bay.

Hundreds of prisoners have been kept without charge and without concrete evidence at the prison. One of the main methods of extracting confessions from them is through the use of torture.

Disturbingly, a report by the Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers revealed how in the decade after 9/11, US military physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists allowed and participated in ‘cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment’ of prisoners.

It also showed how doctors who had taken the Hippocratic Oath advised the military on how best to deploy waterboarding, sleep deprivation and sensory overloading.

The two-year report entitled ‘Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism And Detainee Abuse In The War On Terror’ supported by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and the Open Society Foundations said that both the Department of Defense and CIA were behind these atrocities.

Kidnapped detainees are routinely tortured by US state officials in Guantanimo

Kidnapped detainees are routinely tortured by US state officials in Guantanimo

According to the evidence presented in the report, CIA medical personnel were in the presence of terror suspects being waterboarded and privacy for patients who were detained in the facility went out of the window.

Those who went on hunger strikes in protest at their treatment were routinely force-fed by having a tube shoved down into their throats and stomachs.

The CIA allegedly contracted a psychologist who had previously trained US troops to withstand torture.

Using his findings the CIA designed ‘enhanced interrogation’ which aimed to ‘induce hopelessness’ and also to ‘psychologically dislocate’ the suspect.

Methods used to induce these feelings included isolation and squatting positions for ‘long periods of time.’

Dr Gerald Thomson, professor of medicine at Columbia University and member of the Taskforce told the Guardian newspaper: “The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve.

“‘It’s clear that in the name of ‘national security’ the military trumped that covenant, and physicians were transformed into agents of the military, and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice.We have a responsibility to make sure this never happens again.”
Of course both the Pentagon and Department of Defense have denied the allegations.

The CIA is no stranger to torture. In 1997, two pentagon documents were released which showed how the CIA headed up several training courses, primarily in Latin American countries which instructed military personnel on how to use torture methods against government dissenters.

These manuals recommend arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. The documents stated that suspects should be held incommunicado and deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms, according to these manuals, should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets.

It is worth noting that many of these methods are routinely used against everyday prisoners today in the guise of strip and cavity searches, dawn raids and solitary confinement.

Other techniques detailed in the manual include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, disrupting routines, threats of pain, deprivation of sensory stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or placebos. It was also common to find out what a person feared most and use that to torture them.

In the 80s, the Baltimore Sun reported that, former Battalion 3-16 member Jose Barrera said he was taught interrogation methods by US instructors in 1983. He said: “The first thing we would say is that we know your mother, your younger brother. And better you cooperate, because if you don’t, we’re going to bring them in and rape them, torture them and kill them.

There are unfortunately many who still believe the government-and mainstream media propaganda that the inmates at Guantanamo are all terrorists and therefore deserve what they get,

However, this assertion is hard to justify when they are held for years without being charged with any crime and when “confessions” extracted from torture are the only “evidence” that is available against the detainees.

Some have been captured for attempting to immigrate to the United States from countries such as Cuba, Haiti or the Dominican Republic. Others such as Binyam Mohammed were released without charge after spending years being tortured in Guantanamo.

Other detainees include Mohammed Sadiq, an 89-year-old man, and Naqib Ullah, a 14-year-old boy. Both suffered from fragile mental and physical conditions, neither of which have been charged or presented with any evidence against them.

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