WASHINGTON (RNS) The National Religious Campaign Against Torture wants the government to investigate claims that doctors and medical professionals performed unethical experiments on detainees in CIA custody during the Bush administration.
On Tuesday (June 8), members of NRCAT voiced their concerns over a report from the Physicians for Human Rights called “Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the `Enhanced’ Interrogation Program.”
According to the report, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, doctors were asked to analyze and improve enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding, forced nudity, sleep deprivation and prolonged isolation.
The report said doctors were told to monitor waterboarding techniques for “how long each application lasted, how much water was applied, how exactly the water was applied … how the subject looked between each treatment.”
“It disturbs me greatly and it should disturb every person of faith,” said the Rev. Richard Cizik, the former Washington director for the National Association of Evangelicals who now heads the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good.
Cizik is one of several religious leaders featured in NRCAT’s new video called “Accounting for Torture: Being Faithful to our Values,” where they urge the White House and Congress to create a commission of inquiry into the use of torture.
“To tolerate what has happened in this period of history … is to violate the collective national soul and we need to make amends,” Cizik said.
By Fernando Alfonso III
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