• Submitted by: admin
• Caribbean
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• Guantánamo
• history
• international
• North America
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• Politics and Government
• 07 / 16 / 2008

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A newly released U.S. government document suggests military officials at Guantánamo tortured a Yemeni man at the prison by depriving him of sleep for 50 days. Lawyers for Salim Hamdan had previously affirmed that their client was beaten and abused but they said sleep deprivation for 50 days, if proved, would be among the worst torture he suffered at the hands of his U.S. captors.

In related news, new information has been revealed about the role psychologists played in helping the CIA develop its torture techniques. In her new book The Dark Side, Jane Mayer reveals a former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), Martin Seligman, was invited by the CIA in the spring of 2002 to speak at the Navy’s SERE school in San Diego.

In the 1960s, Seligman experimented on dogs and found that by shocking a dog repeatedly and randomly, he could brutalize it emotionally into a state of complete passivity. Seligman spoke for three hours about his theory of so-called "learned helplessness" -- noting that his theories were later adapted for use in CIA prisons.

Seligman is the second APA president to be linked to the CIA’s torture program. Last year, it was revealed former APA President Joseph Matarazzo is a partner in the Spokane firm Mitchell and Jessen that was contracted to design the CIA interrogations program. Unlike other medical associations, the American Psychological Association has refused to unequivocally condemn torture.

(RHC)