James Dean
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James Dean, (CP)-A regulatory board of Ohio has refused to take disciplinary action against a former army psychologist accused of watching abusive interrogations of detainees at Guantanamo military and do nothing to stop them.
It is the third time in three years that the boards in Ohio and Louisiana decided not to take action against Larry James, Dean of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton.
“It has been determined that we cannot take official action in this matter,” said researcher Ohio Council, Psychology Carolyn Knauss in a one-page letter dated 26 January.
Harvard International Law School Human Rights Clinic, who helped research the case against James, released the letter to the AP on Wednesday night.
The board’s executive director, Ronald Ross, said Thursday he could not comment on complaints that lead to further action by the Board.
The complaint says James oversaw the abuse at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2003, 2007 and 2008, when he served in the trends of the science team for consultation.
“The detainees were systematically abused while Dr. James was presented in BSCT allegedly ran the Guantanamo,” said the complaint filed last summer. Said they supported the abuses and did nothing to stop it.
In one case, the complaint said, James initially watched without intervening, while an interrogator and three guards subjected to an almost nked man S-EX-ual humiliation by forcing him to wear women’s underwear, and only intervened when he was worried someone could get hurt, according to the complaint.
James said in his 2008 book, “Fixing Hell, the Army sent him to clean up the abuses at Guantanamo and later in the detention center at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
He told the Dayton Daily News in 2009 that he did not understand why the complaints keep coming up.
“No matter what third party, objective review board or person, they have all reached the same conclusion – that there is probable cause,” said James. “There is no arrest, no protection, no psychologist is a step forward and said, ‘with my own eyes, I saw Dr. James do X, Y or Z.”
James did not immediately return a message left Thursday while George Heddleston spokesman said Wright State was satisfied with the decision.
A Harvard lawyer said that the complaint deserves a formal hearing.
“Ohio residents presented the board with more than enough evidence to support the enactment of Larry James for the violation of its obligations as a psychologist using their professional skills to harm others,” said Deborah Popowski Human Law School Harvard Human Rights Program.
Last year, the State Board of Examiners of Psychologists in Louisiana, where James also has a license, refused to comply with a similar complaint against him.
In 2008, the Ohio Board “determined that there is no basis to support the initiation of a formal procedure used to deny admission of Dr. James licensure examination of the Board,” according to a copy of the response of the board provided by the clinic at the University of Harvard.
In June 2007, 350 members of the American Psychological Association signed an open letter to President Sharon Brehm then requested an investigation of James and other members of the association who served in Guantanamo Bay.
The association did not investigate, but in 2008 voted to prohibit its members from participating in interrogations at Guantanamo and other military detention facilities where it believes international law is being violated.
In Texas, the State Board of Examiners of Psychologists has scheduled a hearing Tuesday to consider the case of Jim Mitchell, former U.S. intelligence official say that the submarine was involved in two alleged t*rror*sm suspects in foreign prisons.
In New York, a court order to force an investigation into whether the Army psychologist John Leso developed abusive interrogation techniques of detainees at Guantanamo and should be stripped of his license.
Copyright © 2011 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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