Chapter 3 Conditions of Detention | 53 day for 12 days, with a four-hour interrogation session in the middle. The program was reportedly banned in March 2004. 94 105. The CIA and the Department of Defense designated health professionals to monitor the use of enhanced interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. With respect to the sleep deprivation technique, the memorandum addressed to the CIA indicates that “personnel with medical training are available to and will intervene in the unlikely event of an abnormal reaction.”95 A “Behavioral Science Consultation Team” (BSCT) that included behavioral psychologists, provided guidance for interrogators as to how to best obtain information from detainees. The psychologists were sometimes physically present during interrogations and made recommendations based on information found in detainees’ medical files. 96 106. After a visit to Guantanamo conducted in June 2004, an inspection team of the ICRC found that the handling of prisoners amounted to torture and that some doctors and other medical workers were participating in planning for interrogations (in particular by conveying information about prisoners’ mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators), in violation of medical ethics. 97 Further, medical research involving nine Guantanamo prisoners who alleged abusive interrogation methods concluded that “medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the [Department of Defense] neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm.” The research asserted that “the medical personnel who treated the detainees at GTMO failed to inquire and/or document causes of the physical injuries and psychological symptoms they observed.” 98 107. The Inter-American Commission notes that, before their arrival in Guantanamo, many of the detainees were held in secret prisons overseas under the CIA detention program. This is the case of the “high value detainees,” believed to have planned or participated in the September 11 attacks. According to a report issued by the ICRC, the fourteen high value detainees transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006 “were subjected to a process of ongoing transfers to places of detention in unknown locations and continuous solitary confinement and incommunicado detention throughout the entire period of detention.” 99 It further stated that they were 94 95 96 97 98 99 Tactic Used After it Was Banned, The Washington Post, August 8, 2008. Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/07/AR2008080703004.html Memorandum for John Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency, Re: Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative, from Jay S. Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, August 1, 2002, p. 3. The Report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, The Constitution Project, Washington D.C., 2013, p. 204. The New York Times, Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo, November 30, 2004. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html?ex=1259470800&en=825f1aa04c65241f&ei=50 88&partner=rssnyt Iacopino V, Xenakis SN (2011) Neglect of Medical Evidence of Torture in Guantánamo Bay: A Case Series. PLoS Med 8(4): e1001027. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001027. Available at: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001027#s2 International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody, February 2007, p. 26. Available at: http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamotestimonials-project/testimonies/testimonies-of-the-red-cross/icrc_20070214.pdf Inter-American Commission on Human Rights | IACHR