Campaign Against Torture

Three Years After the Abu Ghraib Scandal

US Guidelines on Detainee Treatment Still Leave Room for Abuse, Accountability Is Inadequate

April 28 marked the third anniversary of the disclosure of the detainee abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib after the US invasion of Iraq. Over the last three years there has been a continuous outcry against the Administration's interrogation policies, including among the military and intelligence communities. The Department of Defense (DoD) has developed clearer guidelines prohibiting most abusive practices but it still continues to involve mental health professionals in the interrogation of detainees, making them active members of the "Behavioral Science Consultation Teams" (BSCTs). Ambiguities in the DoD guidelines and weaker standards for the CIA leave room for continued abuse and not enough accountability.

Medics, physicians and psychologists played direct roles in the severe abuse of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged "20th 9/11 hijacker" and others. Government documents reveal that at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and 2003, while under clinical supervision, monitoring and treatment, Qahtani was subjected to over 40 days of interrogation involving dogs, prolonged sleep deprivation, humiliation, forcible restraint, hypothermia and compulsory intravenous infusions. As Steven Miles, MD, recently pointed out in The American Journal of Bioethics, health professionals who treated Qahtani prolonged harsh interrogations and used their training as behavioral scientists to break him down.

The public record now shows that the abusive interrogation techniques used against Mohammad al-Qahtani and many others at multiple sites may have originated with the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) military training program at Fort Bragg, NC. Evidence suggests that SERE psychologists were instrumental in creating the techniques that have been used at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. In a groundbreaking article in The New Yorker, journalist Jane Mayer reports that, according to several sources with knowledge of SERE activities, "after September 11 several psychologists versed in SERE techniques began advising interrogators at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Some of these psychologists essentially 'tried to reverse-engineer' the SERE program."

Military psychologists who were present during abusive interrogations wrote the ethics policy that allows psychologists to continue participating in interrogations.
Growing concerns over the roles of psychologists in abusive interrogations prompted the American Psychological Association to create a blue-ribbon task force to make policy recommendations about psychologist involvement in interrogations, which were later adopted by the association's board. The task force endorsed participation by psychologists in national security-related interrogations. Mark Benjamin has reported in Salon.com that "6 of the 10 psychologists on the task force have close ties to the military.... 4 of the psychologists who crafted the permissive policy were involved with the handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or served with the military in Afghanistan..."

In the three years since the Abu Ghraib scandal, the evidence supporting PHR's strong advocacy for a ban on all health professional participation in interrogations has increased substantially. Yet much more needs to be known about what has happened in the past and what continues to occur.

Please join the Campaign Against Torture in calling for a full Congressional investigation into the role of SERE techniques in CIA and Department of Defense interrogations, and the involvement of psychologists and other health professionals.

Sources

• Steven Miles, MD, “Medical Ethics and the Interrogation of Guantanamo 063”
• Mark Benjamin, “Psychological warfare”
• Jane Mayer, “The Experiment”

Related Reading

• Physicians for Human Rights, Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by U.S. Forces
• Steven Miles, MD, Oath Betrayed
• Philip Zimbardo, MD, The Lucifer Effect