U.S. Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers, perhaps participating in torture, according to a report in today's edition of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
Medical personnel helped tailor interrogations to the physical and mental conditions of individual detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the report claims. It says that medical workers gave interrogators access to patient medical files and that psychiatrists and other physicians collaborated with interrogators and guards who in turn deprived detainees of sleep, restricted them to diets of bread and water, and exposed them to extremes of heat and cold.
"Clearly, the medical personnel who helped to develop and execute aggressive counter-resistance plans thereby breached the laws of war," says the four-page article.
"The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it."
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