Red Cross Report on Treatment of CIA Detainees Published

Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » Red Cross Report on Treatment of CIA Detainees Published

Last night, the New York Review of Books website published the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) 40-page report on the treatment of the 14 so-called "high-value detainees" (PDF) held at Guantánamo. This is especially stunning because this report was previously classified — the document itself states that it is "strictly confidential" and intended for CIA eyes only. The report concluded that the CIA used torture and that "[t]he totality of the circumstances in which the fourteen were held effectively amounted to an arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance."

Many of the report’s findings aren’t surprising: we’ve known for quite while, through investigative reporting, FOIA litigation, former detainee accounts and even admissions by the CIA, that detainees were tortured with prolonged stress positions, forced nudity, and sleep deprivation, and at least three of them were waterboarded.

What’s come through in more detail, however, is medical professionals’ actual participation in the torture of prisoners....