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WASHINGTON - Former detainees from American military jails in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and lingering physical injuries and scars that can be traced to their imprisonment, according to a human rights group.

One Iraqi prisoner, identified only as Yasser, reported being subjected to electric shocks three times and being sodomised with a stick. His thumbs bore round scars consistent with shocking, Physicians for Human Rights said in report obtained by The Associated Press before its official release. He would not allow a full rectal exam.

Another Iraqi, identified only as Rahman, reported he was humiliated by being forced to wear women’s underwear, stripped naked and paraded in front of female guards, and was shown pictures of other naked detainees. The psychological exam found that Rahman suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and has enduring sexual problems related to his humiliation, the report said.

“Some of these men really are, several years later, very severely scarred,” said Barry Rosenfeld, a psychology professor at Fordham University who conducted psychological tests on six of the 11 detainees covered by the study from Physicians for Human Rights. “It’s a testimony to how bad those conditions were and how personal the abuse was.”

All the prisoners were freed without charges, either innocent or not valuable enough to the military to hold.

The report from Physicians for Human Rights — an advocacy group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that investigates abuse around the world and advocates for global health and human rights — is the most extensive medical study of former detainees published so far to determine whether their stories of abuse at American hands could be corroborated with physical evidence. It followed standards and methods used worldwide to document torture.

Doctors and mental health professionals examined 11 former prisoners in intensive two-day sessions. The group alleges it found evidence of US torture and war crimes, and said some US military health professionals allowed the abuse of detainees, denying them medical care and providing confidential medical information to interrogators which was then exploited.

The report came as the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed documents showing military lawyers warned the Pentagon that some of the methods it used to interrogate and hold detainees after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks violated military, US and international law. Those objections were overruled by the top Pentagon lawyer, who said he was unaware of the criticism.—AP

June 22nd, 2008 | Category: Abuse, Detainee Abuse, Iraq, Sexual Abuse, Torture, human rights |  Print This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL