Exploratory study on the quality of forensic assessments using the Istanbul Protocol in a virtual versus face-to-face environment.

INTRODUCTION: With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, most torture victim care centres had to adapt their forensic assessment methods and move to online methodologies. Therefore, it is essential to assess the advan-tages and disadvantages of this type of inter-vention, which seems to be here to stay. METHOD: Structured administered surveys were conducted with professionals (n=21) and with torture survivors (SoT) (n=21) from a sample of 21 Istanbul Protocols (IP). Compar-ing face-to-face (n=10) and remote (n=11) in-terviews in relation to the evaluation process, satisfaction, difficulties encountered, and compliance with therapeutic aspects. All as-sessments were primarily psychological. Three remote and four face-to-face interviews in-cluded a medical assessment. RESULTS: No significant problems were found in relation to the ethical requirements of the IP. Satisfaction with the process was pos-itive in both modalities. Regarding the online method, there were frequent connection prob-lems and a lack of adequate material resources in the remote assessments, requiring a signifi-cantly higher number of interviews in most cases. Survivors were more satisfied than eval-uators. Overall, the forensic experts described problems in complex cases with an under-standing of the person's emotional response, they established a bond, and they undertook psychotherapeutic interventions in the event of an emotional crisis during the assessment. In the face-to-face protocols, logistical and travel problems were frequent, which meant that fo-rensic work times had to be adapted. DISCUSSION: The two methodologies are not directly comparable but have specific issues to be studied and addressed. More invest-ment and adaptation in remote methodology is needed, especially given the poor economic situation of many SoT. Remote assessment is a valid alternative to face-to-face interviews in specific cases. However, there are very relevant human and therapeutic aspects that indicate that, whenever possible, face-to-face assess-ment should be preferred.

The manipulation of minds:reckoning with the legacy of the american post 9/11 torture program.

In this article, we argue that the government's post 9-11 torture program was a big lie, in that the designers, executors and enablers knew all along that torture does not elicit reliable information. We review the government's own research on the matter, and we discuss the ways in which methods known to be unreliable were implemented, most saliently at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. We review the secrecy and propaganda surrounding the scope and horror of the torture program at Guantánamo and black sites around the world, and the painful truth of how the government knowingly adopted the terror policies of the torture program, against their own knowledge, against international human rights, and against the law. On January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. became the 46th President of the United States, following what might very well have been the most chaotic election in the recent history of the United States. The turmoil reached a peak on Jan 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington, DC. At the center of this extended and ongoing political upheaval is what has been labeled "The Big Lie" - the completely disproven notion that Biden's win was based on fraudulent grounds, and that the election was stolen from Trump because of a corrupted voting process. President Biden has consistently rejected reality warping and presents himself on the national stage as a man of reason, and a strong supporter of science. He has proclaimed "Science is discovery. It's not fiction", as he announced that his team of scientific advisors would summon "science and truth" to combat climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges facing his new administration, adding "The same laws apply, the same evidence holds true regardless of whether you accept them." President Biden can show his self-proclaimed commitment to truth by following through on his words with action. In particular, he can fulfil the task which his two predecessors, Trump and Obama, both failed to do: Closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. The same United States law and international law apply; the same evidence, or lack thereof holds true for those remaining 38 prisoners being held within the confines of a US-run concentration camp in the Caribbean. The laws of science apply, the rules of evidence apply, and the rule of law applies. Science and truth cannot be situationally applied to suit political agendas, especially not within the confines of a facility once called a "Battle Lab" (Leopold, 2015), where the military touts phrases like "honor bound" and "defend freedom" at the entrance, yet the truths of what goes on inside are withheld from the public record, via the government's complex layers of secrecy, including classification, redactions, and obfuscations. There can be no justice without truth. The system has derailed every effort to bring the suspected 9/11 terrorists to justice before tribunals that have failed and have been derailed by torture. While President Biden can't remove the stain of the national torture policies, he can show that the Constitution endures; that the rule of law prevails, by illuminating the shadowland of the torture regime. Joe Biden needs to demonstrate that truth matters - even painful truths. In this article, we will describe that through a painstaking and laborious process of discovery, we now know that behind the gates of Guantánamo Bay and its related archipelago of black sites there were prisoners, often held on dubious grounds or no reasonable grounds at all. We know that these prisoners were submitted to treatments aimed squarely at generating complete psychological disintegration. As we will lay out in the article, prisoners captured during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom were subjected to physical violence, sexual violence, and an astonishing array of psychologically abusive tactics under the misnomer 'interrogation'. We also know that the torture program metastasized into a monster, as if lifted from the pages of the most absurd of postmodern fictions, and that the United States has never held anyone accountable, nor faced any reckoning for this disaster of human rights (Senate Select Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency Detention and Interrogation Program, 2014). And we know that the disaster that was the torture program was all based on lies, one big lie in particular - that torture worked to break through to truth. The chief argument, which we will defend below, is that the schemers behind the system of torture knew all along that this was bogus; that torture does nothing to produce truth, that what it breaks is a person's autonomy and very selfhood, rendering them compliant in the extreme. Indeed, the CIA and United States military, who both committed war crimes, knew all along that they propagated falsehoods - our main argument is that the historical record shows that the CIA itself has a long history of studying precisely the effect of techniques like those employed post 9/11. As we shall see, the so called architects had no interrogation experience, but were well-versed in communist-based methodologies known to produce false information.

Mental Health Screening Approaches for Resettling Refugees and Asylum Seekers: A Scoping Review.

Refugees and asylum seekers often face delayed mental health diagnoses, treatment, and care. COVID-19 has exacerbated these issues. Delays in diagnosis and care can reduce the impact of resettlement services and may lead to poor long-term outcomes. This scoping review aims to characterize studies that report on mental health screening for resettling refugees and asylum seekers pre-departure and post-arrival to a resettlement state. We systematically searched six bibliographic databases for articles published between 1995 and 2020 and conducted a grey literature search. We included publications that evaluated early mental health screening approaches for refugees of all ages. Our search identified 25,862 citations and 70 met the full eligibility criteria. We included 45 publications that described mental health screening programs, 25 screening tool validation studies, and we characterized 85 mental health screening tools. Two grey literature reports described pre-departure mental health screening. Among the included publications, three reported on two programs for women, 11 reported on programs for children and adolescents, and four reported on approaches for survivors of torture. Programs most frequently screened for overall mental health, PTSD, and depression. Important considerations that emerged from the literature include cultural and psychological safety to prevent re-traumatization and digital tools to offer more private and accessible self-assessments.

Remote medico-legal assessment by telephone during COVID-19: Monitoring safety and quality when documenting evidence of torture for UK asylum applicants.

INTRODUCTION: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Freedom from Torture developed remote telephone assessments to provide interim medico-legal reports, ensuring people could obtain medical evidence to support their asylum claim. METHOD: To audit this new way of working, feedback was collected from the doctors, interpreters, individuals being assessed, and senior medical and legal staff who reviewed the reports. This paper presents findings from the first 20 assessments. RESULTS: Individuals assessed reported that the doctor developed good rapport, but in 35% of assessments reported that there were some experiences they felt unable to disclose. In 70% of assessments, doctors felt that rapport was not as good compared to face-to-face. In the majority of assessments, doctors were unable to gain a full account of the torture or its impact. They reported feeling cautious about pressing for more information on the telephone, mindful of individuals' vulnerability and the difficulty of providing support remotely. Nevertheless, in 85% of assessments doctors felt able to assess the consistency of the account of torture with the psychological findings, in accordance with the Istanbul Protocol (United Nations, 2004). Factors that hindered the assessment included the inability to observe body language, the person's ill health, and confidentiality concerns. CONCLUSION: This research indicates that psychological medico-legal reports can safely be produced by telephone assessment, but are more likely to be incomplete in terms of both full disclosure of torture experiences and psychological assessment. The limitations underline the need for a follow-up face-to-face assessment to expand the psychological assessment as well as undertake a physical assessment.