Psyche, Science, and Society

More on Steven Miles’ new archive on detention center medical activities

April 26th, 2007

Here is a Twin Cities, Minnesota, press report on Stephen Miles’ new archive on medical activities (including psychological) in America’s detainee prisons. [I have highlighted a phrase, pointed out by Dr. Miles, in which a DoD spokesperson demonstrates her complete lack of understanding of the basic character of democracy.]:

U archives unvarnished look at war detainees
Treatment detailed online with U.S. documents
BY JEREMY OLSON

A University of Minnesota bioethicist has created an online database of government documents that he hopes will increase public scrutiny of how the U.S. has treated detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Steven Miles said the U archive is not an “anti-war site” but offers an unvarnished look at government documents with disturbing details of deaths, maltreatment and inadequate medical care.

There are records detailing:

“The idea of our government taking babies away from mothers who should be nursing so those mothers can endure interrogation is just flat-out wrong,” Miles said. “Read the account and see if it chills you. It chills me.”

Most of the documents were provided by the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained them through Freedom of Information Act requests and a lawsuit.

The civil rights group has received the documents in large and unorganized batches that have been difficult to sort and organize in any usable way, said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU attorney who has handled the FOIA lawsuits.

The U archive took the specific documents dealing with medical care and death investigations, and organized them by their subjects and individuals involved. Miles said some documents had names blacked out, but he was able to link them with other investigative documents that still contained the names.

“The government has never admitted that a child died in these prisons,” he said. “To find where they failed to redact a sentence which describes a child dying of untreated tuberculosis is really part of the process of accountability.”

Miles included that incident in his book “Oath Betrayed,” which was published last year on the treatment of prison detainees.

When George Annas of the Boston University School of Public Health reviewed the book, he challenged Miles to make the source documents publicly available. Now that this has happened, Annas said it is a true public service.

“Otherwise, it’s too easy for people to say, ‘Oh it’s not real. You’re making this up. The military says we’re not doing this,’ ” Annas said.

A Defense Department spokeswoman acknowledged the U documents were originally sent to the ACLU, but she declined further comment.

“Further dissemination of this material isn’t in the spirit of the FOIA program,” spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said.

The documents reflect the new demand for “real-time” information instead of a delayed disclosure of government actions 30 years later that often has “a historian’s gloss on it,” Miles said.

Miles said he was startled by how documents reviewing the same account were widely different. A Navy investigative report on the escapee concluded that his death resulted from a fall during one of several attempts.

One Marine report mentioned the fall, but it ruled the cause of death as inconclusive and described how the man was tightly restrained for more than 90 minutes before his death.

According to the Marine report: “He was restrained, and this time the guards tied him to the window with his back to the window, his arms stretched apart, with his legs tied to the bars of the window. The guards also tied a strap of engineer tape to the detainee’s midsection, to further restrain him. His position resembled that of a person who had been crucified.”

A follow-up Marine investigation determined that the restraint was improper and potentially dangerous, but that the escapee likely died from injuries sustained in the fall. The report noted the improper restraint was partly the result of miscommunication caused by the death of the company commander.

The escapee was a combatant detained during attacks in April 2004 on a camp in Iraq that killed five Marines and wounded many more, the report noted. Marines at least once would have been justified in shooting him during an escape, but didn’t, the report said.

Some people may view these detainee deaths as the natural consequence of war, but Miles said it is important for the public to make that judgment. It is important for the U.S. to provide humane care of prisoners and to abide by international anti-torture laws if it expects other countries to meet those standards, Miles said.

The U’s Human Rights Library will continue to update the database as more documents become available. Missing right now are any documents from the CIA detailing how that intelligence agency has treated detainees.

“It is important,” Miles said, “given the gravity of issues here - where war crimes are at stake - that the data be as soundly presented as possible.”

Jeremy Olson can be reached at jolson@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5583.

Entry Filed under: APA, Democracy, Guantanamo, Interrogation, Psychology, Rights and Liberties, Torture, War Crimes, War and Peace