NYT: Red Cross President Plans D.C. Visit on (Gitmo) Detainees' Treatment

[DeepModem Mom]

Red Cross President Plans Visit to Washington on Question of Detainees' Treatment
By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: December 1, 2004


WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday that the organization's president, M. Jakob Kellenberger, was hoping to visit Washington soon to press senior Bush administration officials about the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Committee officials in Washington, and at the organization's headquarters in Geneva, said that Mr. Kellenberger had made visits to Washington before. But it was clear that any coming visit would be used to raise at a high level the issues contained in a Red Cross report charging that the American military had used psychological and physical coercion on detainees that was "tantamount to torture."

A report in The New York Times on Tuesday said the International Committee of the Red Cross made the charges after a visit in June by a team of relief workers that included medical personnel. A memorandum based on the report and obtained by The Times said the Red Cross believed that doctors and other medical personnel at Guantánamo were assisting in the planning of interrogations in what was described as "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

The Pentagon on Tuesday denied that its forces at Guantánamo engaged in torture and said the detainees there, who now number about 550, were treated humanely....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/01/politics/01gitmo.html

[struggle4progress]

1. kick

:kick:

[mmonk]

2. sic 'em Kellenberger!