U.S. Forces and Justice Nominee Face Continued Questions about Torture
Jan 10th, 2005 • Posted in: NewsWASHINGTON
From the Capitol to Cuba, the treatment of prisoners captured during the U.S.-led war on Iraq spawned numerous stories with ethical threads last week. Among the developments:
- Alberto Gonzalez, nominated to head the Justice Department by President George W. Bush, was questioned last week on Capitol Hill by the Senate Judiciary Committee over his role in drafting memos that appeared to approve the use of torture on detainees. Gonzalez, who initially distanced himself from the memos and their ensuing scandal, was later revealed to be significantly involved in their drafting, leading to questions about his ability to stand with constitutional principle instead of push for wanted political ends. Gonzalez defended his actions, saying the Bush administration does not endorse torture. He is expected to be confirmed.
- U.S. military doctors violated both the Geneva Conventions and their Hippocratic oath by helping U.S. forces design coercive and painful interrogation procedures, last week’s New England Journal of Medicine asserted. The Journal reports that military medical personnel helped tailor the techniques by basing them on detainees’ medical and psychological records. The Pentagon last week called the article inaccurate, saying that while doctors consulted on techniques, they never participated in the actual abuse or torture, according to the Washington Post. The Pentagon also said that some military doctors may legitimately focus their efforts not on healing patients, but on coaching interrogators in how far they can go without endangering a detainee’s health.
- An Australian citizen being held by U.S. forces at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, last week accused the U.S. military of sending him in late 2001 to Egypt where he was questioned and tortured. Egyptian-born Mamdouh Habib has asked U.S. courts to bar the military from engaging again in the process known as rendition, according to papers released last week. The U.S. military told the Washington Post that it asks countries with poor human rights records for assurances that such captives will not be harmed, though critics say the tacit understanding is otherwise. An Egyptian official last week told the Post that “accusations that we are torturing people tend to be mythology.”
- The U.S. military said it will investigate allegations of prisoner abuse detailed in recently released FBI documents. To date, the Pentagon says 137 military members have been disciplined or face courts-martial for mistreating detainees, according to the New York Times. The scope of the allegations in terms of both number and geography have led to questions about whether such abuse was random, as the military insists, or derivative from policy, as critics contend. Last week also saw the selection of a 10-man jury for the military trial of U.S. Army Spc. Charles Graner, widely fingered as the ringleader in the abuses at Abu Ghraib, noted the Associated Press.
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