Medical "supervision" of torture

The New York Times reported this morning that the long-classified investigative report by the International Committee of Red Cross outlines the participation of medical personnel, including physicians, in torturing the 14 "high-level" detainees who were eventually transferred to Guantanamo. According to the previously classified report, the CIA interrogators were almost always supervised by medical personnel who would often order them to either stop, continue, or adjust the torturing procedure. As a reminder, the full report had been disclosed earlier and it had outlined the types of torture the CIA used: slamming the prisoner into a wall, having them shackled to the ceiling for hours at a time, sleep deprivation, locking the prisoner in small cages, and of course waterboarding. In one disturbing description, a one-legged prisoner said he was ordered to stand on his remaining leg for hours and a doctor would occasionally inspect the swelling and once the swelling of the leg became really bad, the doctor ordered him to sit down.

The Red Cross concludes that this behavior of the medical personnel violated not only the code of medical ethics but the international law: “The totality of the circumstances in which the 14 were held effectively amounted to an arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance, in contravention of international law,”

There have been some recent hopeful developments in Europe that suggest that there may be some justice coming to the torturers-in-chief of the Bush administration. Apparently, a Spanish court--presided over by the same prosecutor who relentlessly prosecuted the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet--has ordered an inquiry into the potential war crimes of 6 Bush officials, all lawyers, who sanctioned torture. The officials include, David Addington (Cheney's chief of staff and the main architect of torture), John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales, among others. If the court concludes that war crimes were committed, it is bound law to issue arrest warrants. Then it would be up to the Obama administration to either, extradite the former officials or try them here. But even if Obama does not do either, these officials could no longer leave the US without being arrested as soon as they stepped foot on foreign soil.

Given the fact that after World War II there were about 70 cases of medical personnel prosecuted for participating in Nazi war crimes, the list of defendants at the Spanish court needs to be expanded, substantially!