Medical Workers Tortured Terror Suspects: Report

Medical personnel interrogated and tortured CIA terror suspects at secret prisons in what has been described as a "gross breach of medical ethics," a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross revealed.

The medical professionals monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding and were present when guards confined detainees to small boxes, shackled them to the ceiling, kept them in cold cells and slammed them into walls, the New York Times reported.

"I look after your body only because we need you for information," one medical worker is quoted as saying in the report.

The findings in the report were based on the statements of 14 prisoners moved to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

The Red Cross concluded that the medics had "condoned and participated in ill treatment" of prisoners and noted that at times workers "gave instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods." 

It was unknown what type of medical professionals helped with interrogations but sources told the Times that psychologists helped run the CIA's program and physicians' assistants, former military paramedics and sometimes physicians worked in it regularly.

The 43-page report (PDF file here) was written in 2007 shortly after former President George W. Bush said publicly the United States had not tortured prisoners at the secret CIA prisons. It was first made available on the New York Review of Book website on Monday.

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