Translation from Clarín: Thin Red Line: Psychologists at Guantanamo
Yesterday I posted an article from the Argentine paper Clarín on the APA referendum victory. Especially interesting was a rough translation of the first paragraph indicating how different coverage was in Argentina than was mainstream coverage in the US. Reader Telma Alencar kindly responded to my request for a translation of the whole piece.
From the translation we can see the sympathetic coverage. But we also see a misperception of the role of the Jawad case in the APA struggle. While the mistreatment of Jawad at the direction of a BSCT psychologist was important, this was only one of many important revelations that contributed to changes in APA policy.
Here is the translation. Thanks Telma Alencar
Translation Spanish – English
________________________Thin Red Line: Psychologists at Guantanamo
By Gustavo Sierra
October 21, 2008
Clarín.com – Argentina
US psychologists decided, after 7 years, that it’s not good to help military personnel in interrogation and torture sessions in the GTMO prisoner camp. And the decision was not unanimous. Through an Internet-based referendum, the APA succeeded by 8,792 votes to 6,157 in incorporating a prohibition on working at the naval base, where thousands of prisoners from the war against terror have come through. That means that over 6,000 American psychologists think that it is useful for one of their kind to help interrogators.
Until now, APA’s Ethics Code allows its members, who were not always present at the time they applied some of the 19 coercive procedures as the torture known as “water drowning” (waterbording), to participate in interrogations related to the search for information relevant to national security.
The debate that led to the vote came after the lawyers of prisoner Mohammed Jawad revealed that he had suffered isolation and other forms of torture on the advice of a psychologist. Jawad was transferred to Guantanamo from Afghanistan when he was 15 .
Accordingly to the transcript of some of the interrogation sessions, the boy suffered serious psychological consequences during his detention which resulted in several suicide attempts. Despite this, the psychologist recommended continuing the interrogations. When the lawyers wanted to take this professional to court, the psychologist got shelter in Article 31 of the Military Code of Justice and ensured that his name was not involved.
From the ranks of the Army, there is a persistent insistence that the participation of psychologists in the so-called “Behavioral Science Consultation Team ” (known in prison slang as “BSCT”) is essential to hold such meetings “safe, effective and legal.”
From now on, any psychologist who wants to continue exercising their profession may not participate in any torture session neither in Guantanamo nor in any other military center. “This was a fight for the continuation of the same profession,” said the new president of the APA Alan Kazdin. “We managed to recover the ethics that we should never have lost.”
From Argentine paper shocked that some American psychologists support helping interrogations,
October 30th, 2008