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WASHINGTON, July 15 (Xinhuanet) -- New evidence of prisoner
abuses in the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, surfaced Friday as
news reports said doctors there was ordered to withhold medicine from
uncooperative prisoners.
In an ethics complaint filed with the medical licensing board of California, lawyers of some detainees in
Guantanamo accused Capt. John S. Edmondson, head of the prison hospital there,
of supervising such a method to punish prisoners deemed not cooperative enough
with the interrogators, according to Friday's The New York Times.
The lawyers from the law firm of Allen & Overy said
that as oneof the detainees they interviewed recalled, a doctor once warned that
he would not be treated if he failed to cooperate with the US government.
"When I was suffering from constipation, the doctor said
he will treat me after I talk to the interrogators," the prisoner was quoted
by the complaint letter as saying.
The lawyers said Edmondson should be responsible for
that and suggested he should be disciplined by the licensing board.
In the United States, military doctors like Edmondson
are required to maintain their licenses with medical boards.
Pentagon officials declined to comment on the
particular matter,but said an Army investigation made public a week ago
concluded that there are no serious problems with health care given to the
detainees in Guantanamo.
The complaint was lodged after US military
investigators reported to a Senate committee Wednesday that they found multiple
incidents of prisoner abuses at Guantanamo.
The Guantanamo base currently detains 520 prisoners
and most ofthem were captured during the US war in Afghanistan after the Sept.11
terrorist attack.
The detainees are classified as "enemy combatants" by
the United States and are denied rights accorded to war prisoners under the
Geneva Conventions. Enditem |