The Associated Press just broke the big story about Physicians for Human Rights' landmark report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of US Torture and Its Impact, and MeteorBlades is the first blogger to break it down.
On top of this outstanding coverage, here's just one little story that will break your heart. It takes less than a minute to tell, but may stay with you for the rest of your life.
Farnoosh Hashemian, MPH, has met a number of former detainees -- men who were never charged with any crime, but who endured months of relentless and horrific torture at the hands of US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Medical evidence gathered by an international team of physicians and psychologists convened by PHR corroborates the first-hand accounts of 11 former detainees who were subjected to torture. Their litany of agony and anguish is documented in Broken Laws, Broken Lives, and includes severe beatings, electric shock, sexual humiliation, sodomy, sleep deprivation combined with sensory bombardment and temperature extremes, threats of sexual assault on detainees and their families, and even cases of US personnel forcing men to drink urine.
These abuses are all catalogued and corroborated in Broken Laws, Broken Lives. Farnoosh led this report’s investigation on the consequences of human rights abuses at US detention facilities.
Here's one anecdote you will not find in the official report.
In December 2006, Farnoosh met a man named Laith, a former detainee. He recounted the forms of torture that he suffered. And all the while, he smiled. Why?
Well, you need to hear the reason directly from Farnoosh, who heard Laith's account first-hand. Ben Greenberg of PHR shot this 47-second video, and PHR's Jesse Hamlin added the titles. Please take a minute to witness this.
If you want to learn more and take action on behalf of Laith and all the other detainees tortured by US personnel, visit http://brokenlives.info.
Disclosure: In my day job, I am a strategic communications consultant. I am consulting with PHR on the media roll-out for Broken Laws, Broken Lives.
PHR Press Release: Medical Evidence Supports Detainees' Accounts of Torture in US Custody
PHR Press Release: US Torture of Detainees Caused Severe Pain, Long-Term Suffering