LONDON, Aug 20 (AFP) - US army doctors at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq helped design abusive interrogation methods and failed to report deaths triggered by beatings, according to a study being published Saturday, but the Pentagon insisted there was no evidence of collaboration.
The report in the latest issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, citing government documents including sworn testimony by detainees and troops, details a litany of failures by medics to safeguard detainees` human rights.
One of the most startling charges in the article by Steven H. Miles of the University of Minnesota was that medical personnel collaborated with the military in "designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations".
A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva said jailors had a clear obligation to provide sufficient medical aid to captives.
"Deliberately not providing that would appear to be, to me, in violation of the requirements of the conventions," he told a news conference.
In Washington, the Pentagon said it had no evidence that military medical personnel had collaborated with abusive behaviour by interrogators or guards or condoned abusive behaviour.
The Lancet said some failures constituted serious breaches of international law. The US military has already been rocked by documented abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the prison.
"There is absoutely no doubt that the Geneva Conventions as well as other human rights legislation prohibit any form of mistreatment and torture of people deprived of their freedom," said ICRC spokesman Florian Westphal.
According to the Lancet, "medical personnel evaluated detainees for interrogation, and monitored coercive interrogation, allowed interrogators to use medical records to develop interrogation approaches, falsified medical records and death certificates, and failed to provide basic health care."
The report also claimed the medical system had failed to accurately report illnesses and injuries at the prison, where US soldiers were photographed abusing naked Iraqi prisoners.
Death certificates of prisoners held in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan had been falsified, the author claimed.
In one case "a medic inserted a intravenous catheter into the corpse of a detainee who died under torture in order to create evidence that he was alive at the hospital."
A surgeon stated that the death of an Iraqi officer was from natural causes after his head was pushed into a sleeping bag while interrogators sat on his chest.
"Six months later, the Pentagon released a death certificate calling the death a homicide by asphyxia."
By the standards of the Geneva Convention on prisoner of war treament, "the moral advocacy of military medicine for the detainees of the war on terror broke down," the article said.
The Pentagon said the charges were "serious and far-reaching" but insisted the article painted "an inaccurate picture of how medical personnel performed their duties and upheld their obligations."
"The Department of Defense takes strong exception to these allegations and (Miles`s) wholesale indictment of the medical care rendered by US personnel to prisoners and detainees," said spokeswoman Ellen Krenke.
"Although investigations have not been completed, we have no evidence that military medical personnel collaborated with abusive behavior by interrogators or guards, or condoned any abusive behaviors," she said.
"There is no evidence that final death certificates were falsified."
Nevertheless, the Pentagon promised a "full and fair review" of the matters raised by the article, and defense officials, speaking anonymously, said an investigation into the role of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib prison cited some medical personnel for failing to report evidence of abuse among prisoners they had treated.