New evidence of prisoner abuses in the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, surfaced Friday as news reports said doctors there was ordered to withhold medicine from uncooperative prisoners.

In an ethics complaint filed with the medical licensing board of California, lawyers of some detainees in Guantanamo accused Capt. John S. Edmondson, head of the prison hospital there, of supervising such a method to punish prisoners deemed not cooperative enough with the interrogators, according to Friday's The New York Times.

The lawyers from the law firm of Allen & Overy said that as one of the detainees they interviewed recalled, a doctor once warned that he would not be treated if he failed to cooperate with the US government.

"When I was suffering from constipation, the doctor said he will treat me after I talk to the interrogators," the prisoner was quoted by the complaint letter as saying.

The lawyers said Edmondson should be responsible for that and suggested he should be disciplined by the licensing board.

In the United States, military doctors like Edmondson are required to maintain their licenses with medical boards.

Pentagon officials declined to comment on the particular matter, but said an Army investigation made public a week ago concluded that there are no serious problems with health care given to the detainees in Guantanamo.

The complaint was lodged after US military investigators reported to a Senate committee Wednesday that they found multiple incidents of prisoner abuses at Guantanamo.

The Guantanamo base currently detains 520 prisoners and most of them were captured during the US war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

The detainees are classified as "enemy combatants" by the United States and are denied rights accorded to war prisoners under the Geneva Conventions.

Source: Xinhua