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For Immediate Release

Crucial Senate Hearing on Indefinite Detention Includes PHR Testimony

Cambridge, Mass. - 02/29/2012

PHR announced today that Senator Dianne Feinstein submitted PHR testimony [pdf] at a crucial Senate hearing on indefinite detention. Today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing was focused on Senator Feinstein’s recent bill, “The Due Process Guarantee Act,” which is an attempt to counteract the authorization of indefinite detention which was legislated by the US Congress and signed into law by the President on December 31, 2011.  

Authored by PHR’s Medical Advisor, Dr. Scott Allen, the testimony is based on important findings from the groundbreaking report, “Punishment Before Justice: Indefinite Detention in the US,” which showed that the uncertainty, unpredictability, and uncontrollability of indefinite detention causes severe harms in healthy individuals. In the report, PHR calls on the United States to abolish all policies mandating or permitting indefinite detention.

“PHR’s report makes a clear case for ending the damaging practice of indefinite detention,” said Hans Hogrefe, Chief Policy Officer at PHR. “We are honored that critical findings from our report documenting the harmful psychological and physical effects of indefinite detention have been included in this important hearing, which we hope will be the beginning of necessary changes to this policy.”

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is an independent organization that uses medicine and science to stop mass atrocities and severe human rights violations against individuals. We are supported by the expertise and passion of health professionals and concerned citizens alike.

Since 1986, PHR has conducted investigations in more than 40 countries around the world, including Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, the United States, the former Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe.

  • 1988 — First to document Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurds
  • 1996 — Exhumed mass graves in the Balkans
  • 1996 — Produced critical forensic evidence of genocide in Rwanda
  • 1997 — Shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
  • 2003 — Warned of health and human rights catastrophe prior to the invasion of Iraq
  • 2004 — Documented and analyzed the genocide in Darfur
  • 2005 — Detailed the story of tortured detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay
  • 2010 — Showed how CIA medical personnel sought to improve waterboarding and
                  other interrogation techniques that amount to torture
  • 2011 — Championed the principle of noninterference with medical services
                  in times of armed conflict and civil unrest during the Arab Spring

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