Doctors attached to various torture centers intervene after every session to put the tortured back into condition for new sessions. Under the circumstances, the important thing is for the prisoner…to remain alive. Everything – heart stimulants, massive doses of vitamins-is used before, during, and after sessions to keep the Algerian hovering between life and death.
- Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 1959
The 40-page confidential report, written in 2007, describes how medical staff working for the CIA monitored prisoners’ vital signs to make sure they did not drown while being subjected to waterboarding, during which water is poured over a cloth placed over a person’s nose and mouth… As well as the monitoring of specific methods of ill-treatment, the report said, other health personnel were alleged to have directly participated in the interrogation process. One detainee alleged that a health person threatened that medical care would be conditional upon cooperation with interrogation.
- CIA medics joined in Guantánamo torture sessions, says Red Cross, 7 April 2009