(NEW YORK) MintPress — The U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay suffered minimal damage from Hurricane Isaac, but it is once again being hit by allegations of detainee abuse.
A piece in the medical journal Tropical Medicine and International Health is raising questions about possible medical abuse at the prison facility because of the use of a controversial anti-malaria drug connected to serious side effects, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, nausea, vomiting, sores and suicidal thoughts and behavior.
Army public health physician Remington Niven, in an article titled, “Mass administration of the antimalarial drug mefloquine to Guantánamo detainees: a critical analysis,” wrote that “analysis suggests the troubling possibility that the use of mefloquine at Guantánamo may have been motivated in part by knowledge of the drug’s adverse effects.”
He said it points to “a critical need for further investigation to resolve unanswered questions regarding the drug’s potentially inappropriate use.”
Nevin was quoted in a report published by the independent news website Truthout, which first broke the news about the use of mefloquine at Guantanamo in December 2010, as saying the high dosage that detainees were forced to take upon arriving was akin to “pharmacologic waterboarding.”
In his article, Nevin cited a series of reports by Truthout as well as a separate investigation conducted by Seton Hall School of Law’s Center for Policy and Research and Guantanamo Medical Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 2007.
He testified before Congress about mefloquine’s dangers earlier this year.
Government on the defensive
The Department of Defense (DoD) has maintained that the decision to presumptively administer full treatment doses of mefloquine to all incoming detainees was intended “to prevent the possibility” of malaria “spreading from an infected individual to uninfected individuals in the Guantanamo population, the guard force, the population at the Naval base or the broader Cuban population.”
But as Nevin points out, “not all individuals arriving at Guantanamo received treatment consistent with mass administration of mefloquine. Indeed, hundreds of workers hired by Halliburton affiliate KBR, sent to build the new prison facility at Guantanamo, were not subjected to the DoD’s mefloquine protocol, even though many if not most of them came from malaria-endemic countries. U.S. service personnel were also not given presumptive doses of mefloquine at Guantanamo.”
Nevin also seriously challenged the rationale for presumptive treatment, noting that usually such treatment without diagnosis is reserved for refugees or immigrant groups, who, for instance, might arrive in the United States and “face barriers to accessing medical care after their arrival and that U.S. clinicians may have limited clinical experience with malaria, thus contributing to delays in diagnosis.”
Nevin’s TMIH article was published only a month after a DoD inspector general (IG) report on the use of “mind-altering” drugs on detainees was released. The IG found that drugs were not used to “facilitate interrogation,” but nevertheless, some detainees were drugged for psychiatric reasons and also for “chemical restraints.”
There have, in fact, been several allegations about the conditions at Guantanamo, including the abuse of the religion of the detainees and acts of torture. Human rights groups argue that indefinite detention itself constitutes torture.
Ongoing controversy
Shutting down Guantanamo was one of President Obama’s biggest campaign promises. “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that,” he told 60 Minutes in November 2008.
After three and a half years in office, he has not done so. As of July 2012, 168 detainees remained there.
Shortly after being sworn in, on Jan. 22, 2009, Obama did sign an executive order that required that the prison be closed within a year.
In December of that year, with Guantanamo still open, Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, saying in his speech, “I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength.
“That is why I prohibited torture,” he added. “That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed.”
The deadline in Obama’s executive order came and went, and he still he hadn’t shut Guantanamo down. On Jan. 7, 2011, he signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which placed restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S. or other foreign countries, impeding the facility’s closure.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said during a testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2011, “The prospects for closing Guantanamo as best I can tell are very, very low given very broad opposition to doing that here in the Congress.”
It’s true that Obama ran into opposition in Congress from the beginning. In May 2009, legislators passed a bill preventing federal money from being used to transfer Guantanamo prisoners to the United States. Obama signed that bill into law, even as he issued a statement that disapproved of it. The provision was part of a bigger military bill that Obama said was too important not to sign.
In March 2011, Obama signed another executive order setting up a review process for detainees. It sought to “establish, as a discretionary matter, a process to review on a periodic basis the executive branch’s continued, discretionary exercise of existing detention authority in individual cases.”
Republicans continue to say that Guantanamo must stay open to keep terrorists there. And the issue no longer dominates political conversations, with the public more concerned about the economy.
Dr. Nevin’s article concludes, “Formal investigations may yet reveal the precise rationale and motivation for the use of mefloquine among Guantanamo detainees.” But there are no plans for any investigations.