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June 18, 2008

Firedoglake has a good post about the recent Physicians for Human Rights report that details the forensic evidence of torture used against detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

There have been lots of reports on the Bush Administration's policy of torture, but this one is different in that it is a forensic medical report that could one day soon make a war crimes prosecutor's job much easier.

The report is a series of case studies done involving detainees who were subsequently released and never charged with any crime. Yep, after holding them for years, interrogating them with torture, the US government realized it had no basis to continue holding them and let them go without so much as a "whoops, my bad" by way of apology much less reparation.

The PHR report not only catalogues what the prisoners say happened to them, it includes the steps taken by the physicians to corroborate via physical exam, including bone scans and other testing to establish proof of scarring consistent with the stories told by the prisoners.

In seems that the interrogators focused their work on injuries to soft tissue believing it would not produce lasting scars and it would be the word of a detainee against the word of the US government.

However, some of the electroshock treatments left scars on the skin and some of the beatings left telltale scarring on the bones. Not noticeable to the naked eye, but provable with a bone scan. What PHR has done is put together the kind of forensic evidence needed to actually convict in a war crimes court.

The preface of the report is written by Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret), who famously wrote the shocking report about torture at Abu Ghraib prison.

In the Physicians for Human Rights report, Taguba writes:

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.

STOP! Read that last sentence again. Ok, good, and again. Now let it sink in once and for all.

The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

We will see that question answered over the next few years. It is becoming less and less likely that there won't be any prosecutions, but questions of; exactly which former administration officials? by whom? for what crimes exactly? and under whose jurisdiction? are still open for guesses.

I imagine these questions are being pondered by the likely future indictees themselves as much as by the human rights community.

June 18, 2008 | Permalink

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