The ICRC recommended that "U.S. authorities investigate all allegations of ill-treatment and take steps to punish the perpetrators, where appropriate, and to prevent such abuses from happening again."
Calls for Investigations
The publication of the ICRC's report led to renewed demands by human rights and civil liberties organizations that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special prosecutor with the mandate to launch a criminal inquiry.
"It's imperative that the Justice Department appoint an independent prosecutor to conduct a criminal investigation," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "Government officials who violated the law should not be shielded from investigation. Transparency and accountability are critical to the restoration of the rule of law."
"It is time for the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and others to demand a nonpartisan commission to investigate these crimes," said Frank Donaghue, Chief Executive Officer of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). "The associations must sanction any of their membership found to have violated their professional ethics."
Last year, PHR published a report, "Broken Laws, Broken Lives," that concluded that 11 former detainees held in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay were systematically tortured. The prisoners were later released and were never charged with any crimes. PHR's medical representatives evaluated the detainees and found instances of "medical complicity in torture."
One former Abu Ghraib detainee known only as Hafez told PHR that his arm was dislocated during an abusive interrogation. He said an individual whom he believed was a doctor, put his arm back in place and told the interrogators to "continue."
In February, at a conference for medical professionals, PHR officials presented Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, with a petition signed by attendees calling on Congress to form a committee to probe the torture of prisoners detained in the "war on terror."
"The Bush Administration weaponized medicine by using health professionals to break the bodies and minds of detainees," John Bradshaw, PHR's Washington director, said about the new evidence of medical personnel collaborating in torture. "Congress must act to restore medical ethics by finally authorizing a non-partisan commission to probe these crimes."
Similar concerns have been raised about the Bush administration's twisting of legal standards in securing clearance from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to abuse detainees.
Sen. Whitehouse has been leading the charge for the release of a Justice Department watchdog report that is said to be highly critical of attorneys John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, who helped create the legal framework for the Bush administration's torture policies.
Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.
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