The report was based on interviews with the 14 “high value” detainees belonging to Al Qaeda transferred from the secret prisons to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in September 2006. The report was completed in 2007. The interviews were obtained by Mark Danner, a journalist who has written extensively about torture, and posted Monday night with an article by Mr. Danner on the Web site of The New York Review of Books.

 

But what happened to all the other detainees who passed through the secret CIA prisons who we still don’t know about? This is a question without an answer for now and even if we had that answer, it wouldn’t be one that would please our ears for sure.

 

The Red Cross report describes how medical professionals working for the CIA monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Waterboarding is a form of torture that mainly consists of immobilizing a person on his back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent.

 

Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report revealed. Prisoners were denied solid food unless they cooperated with interrogators and one said he was confined in a crouching position in a box too short to stand in.

 

The ICRC said “any interrogation process that requires a health professional to either pronounce on the subject's fitness to withstand such a procedure, or which requires a health professional to monitor the actual procedure, must have inherent health risks.”

 

Analyzing the answers of the prisoners, the ICRC concluded that “the interrogation process is contrary to international law and the participation of health personnel in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics.”

 

The CIA declined to comment on the report, citing the Red Cross’ own policy of maintaining the confidentiality of its reports. But spokesman Mark Mansfield noted that the agency had long since ended the controversial interrogation program.

 

“Director [Leon] Panetta has taken decisive steps to ensure that the CIA abides by the president's executive orders. That means CIA will not use interrogation techniques outside the Army Field Manual,” he said.