US Vice President Dick Cheney provoked fresh uproar over Guantanamo Bay on Friday after he claimed that prisoners held by the US there were "living in the tropics" and had been given everything they could possibly want.
His comments, the latest attempt by leading Republicans to defend the prison at the US base in Cuba, came as evidence emerged that military doctors have helped interrogators by advising them how to increase stress levels and exploit the fears of the detainees.
A UN team that has been repeatedly denied access to the detainees also claimed it had credible evidence of torture at the camp, where more than 500 Muslim men are held without charge or trial.
In an interview with CNN, however, Cheney insisted: "They got a brand new facility down at Guantanamo. We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well treated there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want."
He added: "There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people."
A spokesman for Amnesty International said that Cheney's comments "missed the point" completely.
"It is not a matter of climate or what food prisoners get, but a question of justice," the spokesman said.
"Instead of pretending that Guantanamo Bay is a kind of resort rather than a detention center, Mr. Cheney should urge a restoration of basic rights for prisoners held there," he said.
Cheney's defense of the camp followed calls from both Democrats and Republicans that it be shut down, amid concerns that persistent claims of ill-treatment of detainees is harming the image of the US abroad.
At a recent congressional hearing, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions said the site "would make a magnificent resort," while Republican Representative Duncan Hunter recently told reporters: "The inmates have never eaten better ... they've never been treated better and they've never been more comfortable in their lives."
But in new revelations that raise serious medical-ethics issues, both the New York Times and the New England Journal of Medicine describe how doctors helped interrogators to increase the psychological pressure on the detainees in the hope of making them more cooperative and willing to provide information.
According to next month's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, the supposedly private medical records of the detainees were routinely used to find their weak spots.
In one instance, interrogators were told that a detainee's medical files showed he had a fear of the dark and suggested ways in which that could be used to induce him to cooperate, the New York Times said yesterday.
It said many of the doctors helping with interrogations were part of behavioral science consulting teams, or BSCT, known as "biscuit" teams.
In an e-mailed statement, a Pentagon spokesman said no investigation had produced credible evidence of the participation of military doctors in inhumane treatment of detainees.
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