The Campaign Against Torture
Areas of Focus
- The US Regime of Psychological Torture
- The Role of Health Professionals in Interrogations and Abuse
- The Abuse of Hunger Strikers in US Detention Facilities
- Detainee Deaths
The Role of Health Professionals in Interrogations and Abuse
The earliest reports of torture and abusive interrogation methods by US personnel were accompanied by disturbing reports of health professional complicity, from withholding or modifying medical care to compel cooperation to disclosure of confidential medical information about physical or mental vulnerabilities to interrogators to failure to report torture and ill-treatment. 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.
Related PHR Documents
- Following Groundbreaking Report by Vanity Fair: PHR Condemns Illegal, Ineffective and Unethical CIA and US Military Torture Practices
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) urgently reiterated its call today for the White House and Congress to prohibit the use of all SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) techniques in interrogations by US agencies, especially those conducted by the CIA at the agency’s "Black Sites" and other secret facilities...
July 17, 2007 - Ten Steps to Restore the United States' Moral Authority
PHR and more than twenty US civil society groups sent Congress this ten-point plan for restoring America's moral authority on detainee treatment issues.
February 23, 2007 - New Study Finds Homicide, Mortar Attacks Leading Causes of Death for Detainees in US Custody
Comprehensive peer-reviewed study looking causes of death for detainees in US custody reports that 112 detainees [105 in Iraq and 7 in Afghanistan] died between 2002 and 2005.
December 5, 2006 - Memo from Assistant Secretary Winkenwerder outlining Department of Defense Policy
This Memo reaffirms the historic responsibility of health care personnel of the Armed Forces . . . to protect and treat, in the context of a professional treatment relationship and established principles of medical practice, all detainees in the custody of the Armed Forces during armed conflict.
June 3, 2005
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