Human Rights Violation Lawsuit Filed Against US Torture Psychologists

Physicians for Human Rights announced its support for a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against two psychologists accused of designing torture mechanisms.  The psychologists, Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, are claimed to be the architects of the government's post-9/11 torture schemes. Physicians for Human Rights  asks, however, that the lawsuit not be the only legal action taken as a result of the torture revelations.  The organization demands a criminal investigation and prosecution of all of those who are responsible for torture beyond the psychologists. 

Jessen's and Mitchell's actions were shocking.  They developed a program of brutal, systematic torture that it claimed was based in science.  The program was based in junk science but was sold to the CIA for $81,000,000.  You read correctly.  Jessen and Mitchell received eighty-one million dollars for a program that delivered shockingly inhumane treatment.  It is difficult to assess which is worse:  psychologists who are charged with doing no harm creating and profiting on a program whose sole purpose is to deliver excruciating torture; or a government that would spend an incredible amount of money for such a program.

Physician for Human Rights reports:

"Mitchell and Jessen also kept detailed logs of interrogation sessions in order to analyze detainees’ reactions to torture, calibrate the methods used, and provide the Bush administration with false assurances that such practices were “safe” and “effective.” Without informed consent, collecting such information constitutes unlawful research and experimentation. PHR has previously documented the CIA’s human experimentation in its watershed 2010 report, Experiments in Torture, and 2014 analysis of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture, Doing Harm."