WASHINGTON - A Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman said Monday that Red Cross officials have "made their view known" that the indefinite detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amounts to torture.
Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said, "It's their point of view," but it is not shared by the Bush administration.
He noted that the administration believes it has the legal right to detain such suspects until the end of the war on terrorism because they are unlawful combatants not subject to the protections of the Geneva conventions.
The New York Times reported Monday that the International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the American military of using techniques "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo.
more:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&nci...NYT-Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo
~snip~
The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.
The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."
Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said.
The United States government, which received the report in July, sharply rejected its charges, administration and military officials said.
~snip~
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