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Drugging of Guantanamo Detainees Comes Under New Scrutiny

HeadlineApr 23, 2008

The Washington Post reports at least two dozen former and current prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere say they have been given drugs against their will or witnessed other inmates being drugged. The allegations have resurfaced after the release this month of a 2003 Justice Department memo that explicitly condoned the use of drugs on detainees. In the memo, former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo rejected a decades-old US ban on the use of “mind-altering substances” on prisoners. Instead, he argued that drugs could be used as long as they did not inflict permanent or “profound” psychological damage. Legal experts and human rights groups say that forced drugging of detainees for any nontherapeutic reasons would be a particularly grave breach of international treaties banning torture.

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