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Thread: Three Guantanamo prisoners were murdered in 2006

  1. #1
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    Default Three Guantanamo prisoners were murdered in 2006

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

    A story in Harper's earlier this week provides strong evidence that three prisoners at the Guantanamo detention facility were murdered by their American captors one night in 2006. None of the three are known to have any ties to terrorists, and two of them had already been cleared for release.

    According to the NCIS documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.
    What exactly happened is apparently not clear; according to guards at Guantanamo who came forward, it was explained that the prisoners swallowed rags to choke themselves, but that the "suicides" would be explained to the media as hangings:

    According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. This was a surprise to no one—even servicemen who had not worked the night before had heard about the rags. But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored. The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes. (Bumgarner has not responded to requests for comment.)
    When the families received the bodies, their throats had been removed, making it impossible to determine the cause of death:

    The pathologists place the time of death “at least a couple of hours” before the bodies were discovered, which would be sometime before 10:30 p.m. on June 9. Additionally, the autopsy of Al-Salami states that his hyoid bone was broken, a phenomenon usually associated with manual strangulation, not hanging.

    The report asserts that the hyoid was broken “during the removal of the neck organs.” An odd admission, given that these are the very body parts—the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the thyroid cartilage—that would have been essential to determining whether death occurred from hanging, from strangulation, or from choking. These parts remained missing when the men’s families finally received their bodies.
    It's time for the Obama administration to step up and do what's right. Continuing the Bush-era coverup of torture and abuse is just intolerable given the magnitude of the crimes that our nation committed. "Look forward, not backward" is not an acceptable response to these crimes.

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    Further reading: this article in Slate is a little shorter and covers the basics, although it focuses more on why there has not been more outcry. That links to this article which I haven't yet read.

  3. #3
    Curmudgeon OtakuLoki's avatar
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    The military has a reputation for using findings of suicide to avoid admitting, or investigating, potentially embarrassing crimes. I've been involved with one situation where that reputation become a huge factor, when a guy on my ship was found dead in one of the divisional offices. In the end, while the family refuses to accept the idea of suicide, none of the investigations ever found any evidence of the conspiracies they say were going on. In the end, as someone who knew everyone shipboard who was involved, or alleged to be involved, I don't find the murder theory compelling, but still have serious reservations about the suicide finding. And this was a relatively clear-cut situation, without much of the complications that are mentioned in the Harper's article.

    The current investigation and conclusions seem too tainted to be allowed to stand as is. It doesn't help the government's position that I abhor any official sanction of torture enhanced interrogation techniques. If it's not legal for a cop to use, I don't want my military to use it, either. A more open investigation, with at the very least the autopsy results being completely open, needs to be done. And if this is the result of sanctioned torture, we need to end that sanction; if it is the result of unsanctioned torture, people, including Adm. Harris, and several other officers, need to be held accountable.

    If removing the use of torture means that jihadist prisoners are useless from an intelligence stand point (a position I am not willing to concede in the real world, but only mention now for the sake of argument) so be it. I oppose the idea that we have to give up essential liberties and standards just because of a relative handful of violent nuts. I'd rather deal with the low-grade risks of foreign terrorists killing me, than the greater risk of a government that mistakes it's position within the Lincoln quote: Government of the people, by the people and for the people. Refusing to accept the loss of face when things fuck up (if that's what happened, and not deliberate policy) is cowardly, and further damages credibility far more than any open acknowledgment might.

  4. #4
    Sophmoric Existentialist
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    Dreadful. Thanks for posting this, Exy.
    Sophmoric Existentialist

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    The Apostabulous Inner Stickler's avatar
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    I'm too lazy to read the linked articles. Did they say why the neck organs were removed? Because that screams, "We're lying to you and are going to make it difficult as hell for you to figure out." and doesn't make me really sympathetic to the military.
    I don't think so, therefore I'm probably not.

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    Curmudgeon OtakuLoki's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Inner Stickler View post
    I'm too lazy to read the linked articles. Did they say why the neck organs were removed? Because that screams, "We're lying to you and are going to make it difficult as hell for you to figure out." and doesn't make me really sympathetic to the military.
    Nobody responded to the article writer's requests for interviews. Though it's worth noting, the impression I had was that the autopsies were done under the aegis of the civil authorities, not the military. So there's lots and lots of mud to go around there. Do not ignore the civil authorities that are involved in this mess.

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