Pentagon leadership, in collaboration with military psychologists, designed and implemented methods of psychological torture and physical abuse for interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Similar techniques comprise the CIA’s notorious “enhanced interrogation methods.” PHR’s Campaign Against Torture seeks abolition of this regime of abuse and the mechanisms that support it.

The Defense Department’s Inspector General revealed in 2006 that military psychologists, including members of “Behavioral Science Consultation Teams” or “BSCTs” played a central role in designing and implementing the regime psychological torture that became “standard operation procedure” for interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan. PHR’s Campaign Against Torture seeks abolition of the BSCTs and full ethical protection for health professionals from complicity in torture or ill-treatment of prisoners and detainees.

Both the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association ethical guidelines clearly state that hunger striking patients who have made informed refusals for medical intervention should not be force fed. PHR strongly recommends that U.S. policy be changed to be consistent with established medical ethics regarding the treatment of hunger strikers.

The deaths of detainees in US custody raise several serious concerns about their treatment, from questions about the quality of medical care to the prospect of extraordinary brutality in interrogations, and more. In light of these questions and additional findings on the subject, PHR has publicly made a set of recommendations for the safe and ethical treatment of detainees.