— A prominent human rights group accused the CIA on Monday of
conducting illegal human experiments and unethical medical research
during interrogations of high-profile terrorism suspects under the Bush
administration.
Physicians for Human Rights charged that CIA doctors
and other medical personnel collected data to study and calibrate the
use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, severe pain and other
“enhanced” interrogation techniques, but did so under the guise of
trying to protect the detainees’ health.
CIA officials rejected the conclusions of the
30-page report, saying the government did not conduct human experiments
on prisoners, which would be a violation of both U.S. and international
law.
“The report’s just wrong,” said CIA spokesman
“The CIA did not, as part of its past detention program, conduct human
subject research on any detainee or group of detainees. The entire
detention effort has been the subject of multiple, comprehensive
reviews within our government, including by the Department of Justice.”
The physicians’ group spent two years evaluating declassified but redacted records about harsh treatment of detainees after the
terrorist attacks, and did not obtain additional material. It called
for a White House and congressional investigation of its charges.
“The crime of illegal experimentation is equal to the crime of torture,”
The CIA confirmed in
that interrogators had used waterboarding — in which water is poured on
a prisoner’s face until he nearly drowns — on three suspects in 2002
and 2003.
After taking office last year, President
declined calls for a criminal investigation of CIA officers and others
who had used the technique.
After the
administration lawyers approved CIA use of waterboarding, forced
nudity, stress positions, extreme temperatures, and other so-called
“enhanced” techniques as long as doctors ensured the interrogators did
not inflict “severe physical and mental pain.”
The human rights group, based in
concludes that the complicity of doctors, psychologists and other
health professionals at those sessions enabled “the routine practice of
torture,” and helped provide protection against potential criminal
liability.
Medical personnel were “required to monitor all
waterboarding practices and collect detailed medical information that
was used to design, develop and deploy subsequent water boarding
procedures,” the report states.
At one point, the report says, doctors recommended
adding salt to the water used in waterboarding. Records show they hoped
saline solution would reduce the risk of pneumonia or hyponatremia, a
low-sodium condition caused by excessive ingestion of water that can
lead to coma and death.
“This certainly should be considered research,” said Dr. Dr.
CIA doctors analyzed data from 25 detainees who had
undergone various “enhanced” interrogations to determine which
technique was most likely to increase the subject’s “susceptibility to
severe pain,” the report states.
Health professionals also monitored sleep
deprivation of more than a dozen detainees, and then made
recommendations on the effect of keeping a prisoner awake from 48 hours
to 180 hours.
Dr.
“Whether they considered it research or not is irrelevant,” he said.
“All the data points to the fact that these
techniques were designed to cause harm, cause pain and cause suffering,
so it’s ridiculous to claim you can make them safe,” he added.
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