U.N.: Washington acknowledges torture of prisoners

Lebanon Daily News | June 28 2005

Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at U.S. detention centers in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said. The acknowledgment was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the 10-person panel, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"They are no longer trying to duck this, and have respected their obligation to inform the UN," the committee member told AFP.

"They will have to explain themselves [to the committee]. Nothing should be kept in the dark." UN sources said it was the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from U.S. authorities.

The committee, which monitors respect for the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, is gathering information from the U.S. ahead of hearings in May 2006.

Signatories of the convention are expected to submit to scrutiny of their implementation of the 1984 convention and to provide information.

The document from Washington will not be formally made public until the hearings.

"They haven't avoided anything in their answers, whether concerning prisoners in Iraq, in Afghanistan or Guantanamo, and other accusations of mistreatment and of torture," the committee member said.

"They said it was a question of isolated cases, that there was nothing systematic and that the guilty were in the process of being punished," he added.

The U.S. report said that those involved were low-ranking members of the military and that their acts were not approved by their superiors.

The official's comments coincides with a newspaper report saying U.S. military doctors advised interrogators at the Guantanamo base on how to increase stress levels and apply psychological pressure on detainees.

Former interrogators told The New York Times on condition of anonymity that the doctors had based their advice on medical files of the detainees, indicating psychological weaknesses that could be exploited during interrogations.

The interrogators' accounts follow a report in the July 7 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine indicating that interrogators at Guantanamo were systematically accessing the medical records of prisoners.

The report did not mention doctors providing advice to interrogators, but both practices appear to be at odds with ethical rules that establishes the confidentiality of prisoners' medical records.

The Pentagon's top health official said the allegations were "an outrageous distortion" of what actually was going on at the prison camp in Cuba.

Ethics experts consulted by the daily said there were serious questions about the conduct of military doctors, especially those in units known as behavioral science consultation teams, BSCT or "biscuit" teams, which advise interrogators.