US magazine (Harpers) claims Guantánamo inmates were killed during questioning

[sabra]

Source: Guardian UK

Harper's investigation quotes camp staff who say suspects died in interrogation and their deaths were made to look like suicides

US government officials may have conspired to conceal evidence that three Guantánamo Bay inmates could have been murdered during interrogations, according to a six-month investigation by American journalists.

All three may have been suffocated during questioning on the same evening and their deaths passed off as suicides by hanging, the joint investigation for Harper's Magazine and NBC News has concluded.

The magazine also suggests the cover-up may explain why the US government is reluctant to allow the release of Shaker Aamer, the last former British resident held at Guantánamo, as he is said to have alleged that he was part-suffocated while being tortured on the same evening.

"The cover-up is amazing in its audacity, and it is continuing into the Obama administration," said Scott Horton, the contributing editor for Harper's who conducted the investigation.

When the three men – Salah Ahmed al-Salami, 37, a Yemeni, and two Saudis, Talal al-Zahrani, 22, and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, 30 – died in June 2006, the camp's commander declared that they had committed suicide and that this had been "an act of asymmetrical warfare", rather than one of desperation.

...

However, Horton spoke to four camp guards who alleged that when the bodies were taken to the camp's medical clinic they had definitely not come from their cell block, which they were guarding, and appeared to have been transfered from a "black site", known as Camp No, within Guantánamo, operated by either the CIA or a Pentagon intelligence agency.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/18/guantanamo-investigation-harpers-interrogation

---

full report here: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[IndianaGreen]

2. There must be a reason why the war criminals are still being protected

even by the Obama Administration.

Who runs this country anyway? It sure is not the people!

[LakeSamish706]

4. I can't for the life of me figure that out either. My guess is that none of the military,

CIA, FBI, etc. are really being run by this Gov't. I'm more and more believing that there really is a Shadow Gov't. in control.

[villager]

3. well, but we have to "move on" from "partisan" politics. Water under the bridge, y'see...

Never mind the mutilated bodies floating around underneath...

[LakeSamish706]

5. Yep, not allowed to look back, just ahead. n/t

[derby378]

6. You don't mind if I call BULLSHIT on that, do you?

I hear you loud and clear, though.

[villager]

21. I think I do mind, if your're CALLING it -- all in caps -- w/o an explanation

Being that this is, y'know, a discussion board...

[90-percent]

7. One item I recall

At the time of a Gitmo inmate "suicide" there was some General spouting off on just how evil these terrorists are with their asymmetrical warfare. He basically said that the suicide was "an act of war" on the part of the poor bastard that appeared to have killed himself.

I guess if we murder them beforehand we no longer have to fear them committing suicide at us?

-90% Jimmy

[gratuitous]

11. Camp commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris

I remembered that comment, too, so I went to look up who'd said it. I wonder if any enterprising "reporter" will look up Mr. Harris to get his take on things again? Did he know at the time that he was looking at murders and not suicides? If so, why did he lie? If not, why didn't he know?

Ah well, these are surely just questions of academic interest. Nothing to be seen or learned here. Back to business as usual.

[Jumping John]

8. Yea I am sure The Military under Bush could do anything they wanted. But it is now

time that we reinforce the rule of law. And I do not mean military law.



Contradicting account of the deaths

Four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9–10, 2006, have presented an account that contradicts the report published by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). Their account suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9, 2006, had been transported to another location prior to their deaths, and indicates that the deaths were either the result of serious negligence in treatment of prisoners under "enhanced interrogation" or that they were tortured so badly that they died.<22><23><24><25>

Colonel Michael Bumgarner, the commander of Camp America, said that each of the prisoners had had a ball of cloth in their mouth, either for choking or muffling their voices. The bodies of the three men who died at Guantánamo showed signs of torture, including hemorrhages, needle marks, and significant bruising. The removal of their throats prior or during the autopsy conducted by pathologists affiliated with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology made it difficult to determine whether they were already dead when their bodies were suspended by a noose.<22>

The soldiers also say they had been ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provided evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners' deaths. The NCIS seized all written material possessed by the prisoners in Camp America, some 1,065 pounds of material, including privileged attorney-client correspondence.<22>
Press Reaction

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that news of the deaths raised skepticism over whether the Saudi men really killed themselves.<26> The article reports Saudi speculation that the men were driven to suicide by torture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_suicide_attempts

[djp2]

9. Surprised???

K&R

[EFerrari]

10. We CANNOT allow this story to go away.

:kick:

[hootinholler]

16. No kidding Beth. n/t

[Flaneur]

12. We need the names of everyone involved in this shit.

From the commander in chief on down to the lowliest torturer/murderer.

If these fucks are joining my local police force, I want to know it.

[boppers]

13. 911? Even the Harper's story seems odd.

"No doctors could be found there, nor the phone number for one, so a clinic staffer dialed 911."

Dialing 911 from..... GITMO in Cuba? Er.... what?

How does this work in non-US bases? Is it basically routed to the emergency services of the "host" nation? Is it more like 411, with people figuring out who to call?

[Solly Mack]

18. JTF GTMO uses the "911" number for its emergency services

So, absolutely nothing odd about that

https://www.cnic.navy.mil/Guantanamo/Fighters/JointTaskForce/index.htm

It's right there in the list of numbers for the station

[spanone]

14. maybe when bu$h* is done saving haiti we can put him in jail?

[Flaneur]

15. Back to the top with this one.

[Uncle Joe]

17. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, sabra.

[wiggs]

19. Tragically, similar stories of 25 deaths at Abu Ghraib just disappeared down the

memory hole.

There has been a concerted effort to try to narrow the torture debate down to just waterboarding, a gray area to some. But the numerous deaths didn't happen from waterboarding. Other physically rought techniques have obviously been used. Don't know why this isn't part of the national torture discussion.

[sabrina 1]

20. Now that this has been revealed in the news, there will be a

thorough investigation to find the murderers and bring them to justice. We are a country of laws after all.
:sarcasm:

This country is badly in need of an intervention from outside. We will never prosecute war criminals. I wish I could go back and find all those 'progressives' who railed against the demands for the Impeachment of George Bush. I remember them claiming that we were being far too impatient, and that once we got an even bigger majority (the first one wasn't big enough) and a Democrat in the White House, then we could start talking about the rule of law.

Sad that it all has to play out the way it has, so that those of us who wanted immpeachment as soon as the crimes were revealed could point out that we knew once they started using all those excuses, there was never going to be any prosecutions, as they insisted would happen.

[maryf]

22. K&R nt

[donheld]

23. You mean U.S. not USweekly

You had me stunned there for a minute.

[amborin]

24. ny times 2005: brutal beating death of Afghan POW, wrongly held:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E2DA1439F933A15756C0A9639C8B63&scp=2&sq=afghanistan%20prisoner%20interrogation%20taxi%20driver%20died&st=cse

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

''Come on, drink!'' the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. ''Drink!''

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

snip

[GliderGuider]

25. Kick for importance

:kick:

[ThomWV]

26. many have died, there have been many reports of it, and yet not one Murder charge.

Because it is Murder, plain and simple.

[mmonk]

27. Thank you for this and the links.

I will use them. Recommended.

[suffragette]

28. K&R