Evidence of complicity

Medical complicity in torture persists.3 In a study of refugee survivors of torture in Denmark, published in 1990, 20% reported the participation of medical professionals in their abuse.4 During Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in the mid-1990s, medical complicity in the falsification of medicolegal reports of torture, physical mutilation, and death was common, often motivated by fear of retribution by the state.5 In 2007 the reports of nine torture victims in Israel included the names of medical doctors who allegedly participated in their tortures.6 In 2009 the International Committee of the Red Cross report on Guantanamo Bay documented that US health professionals facilitated torture in 14 “high risk detainees.”7 Most recently, in an incident that shows the risks that a whistleblowing physician takes, Ramin Pourandarjani died in Tehran in November 2009 in mysterious circumstances. He had worked as a doctor at the Kahrizak detention centre and had spoken publicly about the torture of imprisoned opposition protesters.8

Some doctors disregard their ethical obligation not to torture when there are strongly contravening political or social mandates. This may take the form of medical screening or treatment to ensure that torture may continue without causing severe morbidity (the so called fit for flogging assessment9), failure to report on wounds …