Doctors involved in abuse at Abu Ghraib, report

He cites evidence that doctors or medics falsified death certificates to cover up homicides, hid evidence of beatings, and revived a prisoner so he could be further tortured. No reports of abuses were initiated by medical personnel until the official investigation into Abu Ghraib began, he found.

''The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations," Miles said in this week's Lancet. ''Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve, and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib."

The analysis does not shed light on how many doctors were involved or how widespread the problem of medical complicity was, aspects that Miles said he is now investigating.

A US military spokesman said the incidents recounted by Miles came primarily from the Pentagon's own investigation of the abuses. ''Many of these cases remain under investigation and charges will be brought against any individual where there is evidence of abuse," said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, US Army spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq.

In a related matter, two military officials in Washington said yesterday that a high-level Army inquiry will cite medical personnel who knew of abuse at Abu Ghraib but did not report it up the chain of command. The inquiry also will criticize senior US commanders for a lack of leadership that allowed abuses to occur, but finds no evidence they ordered the abuse, said the sources, who spoke condition of anonymity.

Photographs of prisoners being abused and humiliated by US troops in Iraq have sparked worldwide condemnation. Although the conduct of soldiers has been scrutinized, the role of medical staff in the scandal has received relatively little attention.

''The detaining power's health personnel are the first and often the last line of defense against human rights abuses. Their failure to assume that role emphasizes to the prisoner how utterly beyond humane appeal they are," Miles said in a telephone interview.

He said military medicine reform needs to be enshrined in international law and include more clout for military medical staff in the defense of human rights.