Military finds little abuse of prisoners under medical care

WASHINGTON – A military self-examination of allegations that medical personnel mistreated prisoners found a few instances of abuse but no widespread problems, the Army’s surgeon general said Thursday.

Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley’s findings were based on surveys and interviews with roughly 1,000 medical personnel who were associated with the care of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He said his survey did not include detainees, the Red Cross or other organizations.

Of the medical personnel surveyed, 32 said they witnessed abuse of prisoners. All but six said they reported the abuse to criminal investigators or their chain of command; the others said the problem was dealt with “on the spot.”

Less than a dozen of the incidents involved possible mistreatment allegedly committed by other medical personnel, Kiley told reporters at the Pentagon after briefing some members of Congress on his findings.

These included medics dropping a stretcher-bound prisoner from too great a height, delaying the administration of pain medication and slapping a violent prisoner, he said.

“The majority of medical personnel did not observe abuse,” Kiley said. “We found no evidence of systemic problems in detainee medical care.”

He said he could not verify allegations in the medical journal Lancet that doctors or medics falsified death certificates to cover up homicides, hid evidence of beatings and revived a prisoner so he could be tortured further.

Kiley said he found problems in medical record-keeping and some vague policies, but said those were being corrected and that detainee medical care has generally been good.

More than 100 prisoners have died while in U.S. custody, according to the military.

Kiley’s “assessment” – the Pentagon denied it was an investigation – is the latest into some aspect of prisoner abuse allegations that have surfaced since the abuses at Abu Ghraib became public knowledge last year.

Jumana Musa, an advocacy director with Amnesty International, said the limited scope of the assessment prevents any real understanding of “the linkages between the policies approved by senior officials and the practices of interrogators.”

“As with past investigations, this myopic examination of the involvement of medical personnel is narrowly drawn to exclude investigation of the broader systemic violations,” Musa said in a statement.

Most of the alleged abuses of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been blamed on military police, interrogators or troops fresh from combat, but a few have involved doctors and medics.

At Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, two Army medics said they knew about abuses of prisoners there but failed to report them, according to the military’s investigation there. Kiley was not asked how they fit into his numbers.

Watchdogs have raised concerns about doctors’ violating medical ethics by pointing out prisoners’ weaknesses to interrogators.

Kiley said the work of these doctors, typically psychologists, is appropriate as long as they do not serve as caregivers to the detainees and their advice is safe, legal and ethical.