Remember the three suicides-by-hanging at Guantanamo Bay in 2006? They happened in the highest-security cell bloc, where guards were supposed to be constantly monitoring the 28 prisoners with video cameras and foot patrols.
The camp commander’s response was an indictment of the suicides as “an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us.”
But a new study by students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University finds evidence of either “gross dereliction of duty” or “a cover-up of something far more chilling.”
This report reveals the following facts:
* The original military press releases did not report that the detainees had been dead for more than two hours when they were discovered, nor that rigor mortis had set in by the time of discovery.
* There is no explanation of how three bodies could have hung in cells for at least two hours while the cells were under constant supervision, both by video camera and by guards continually walking the corridors guarding only 28 detainees.
* There is no explanation of how each of the detainees, much less all three, could have done the following: braided a noose by tearing up his sheets and/or clothing, made a mannequin of himself so it would appear to the guards he was asleep in his cell, hung sheets to block vision into the cell—a violation of Standard Operating Procedures, tied his feet together, tied his hands together, hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling, climbed up on to the sink, put the noose around his neck and released his weight to result in death by strangulation, hanged until dead and hung for at least two hours completely unnoticed by guards.
* There is no indication that the medics observed anything unusual on the cell block at the time that the detainees were hanging dead in their cells.
* The initial military press releases did not report that, when the detainees‘ bodies arrived at the clinic, it was determined that each had a rag obstructing his throat.
* There is no explanation of how the supposed acts of “asymmetrical warfare” could have been coordinated by the three detainees, who had been on the same cell block fewer than 72 hours with occupied and unoccupied cells between them and under constant supervision.
Read the rest of the report here.
Oh my god. I didn’t know I still had the ability to be shocked after Abu Ghraib.
I cannot believe what we have allowed to be done in our name.
What is it Judge Judy says? “If it doesn’t make sense it’s usually not true.”
So some terrorists were murdered. This is supposed to bother me why?
@3: Not everyone held at Gitmo is a terrorist. Do you have such a short memory that you don’t remember this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_capt…
They managed to appeal their detention, so we dumped them in Albania right before their case could be reviewed. Any situation where there is zero oversight will lead to mistakes like this being made.
@3 We have no way of knowing that they are terrorists because they havn’t been tried. It’s been documented that innocent people have been taken to Guantanamo Bay, and tortured. That’s something that our country is not supposed to do.
By the way, if you’re still believe a single word Dick Cheney says about anything, you should donate your brain to science because you aren’t using it anyway, and there’s still a lot science can learn about the nature of stupidity. There’s no reason to believe that many of those prisoners are guilty of anything other than being Muslim.
Yes: there were probably a few people in Gitmo who weren’t terrorists. And innocent people die in war.
Again, this is supposed to bother me why?
We elected Obama to close Guantanamo.
What is taking so long?
@6 Supposed to bother you?… What’s that saying? If you have to ask, you won’t understand. And with this, that’s pretty incredible.
Does anybody else want to yell “I want the truth!” and then “You can’t handle the truth!” Because that’s always the first thing I think about whenever I hear anything about Guantanamo.
@3, 6 – It’s supposed to bother you because you’re supposed to be human. Alas, as this story and your comments show, some people have no humanity.
Ironically, your attitude is precisely the same as the attitude of the terrorists you seem to despise so much.
Get well soon.
it should bother 3 if he believes that these are “the worst of the worst” of the terrorists the government has locked up, too dangerous to even set foot on US soil, and they’re under such lax watch.
So we’re torturing people to death and covering it up, all within the confines of a legally questionable prison where no one is given due process. That means even if the prisoners are “evil”, we as a nation fail to prove ourselves capable of treating people with certain inalienable human rights. This goes against what we as a nation claim to be about. It’s clear that as a nation, we are selfish, brutal, and a bunch of liars who give lip service to justice while fucking over anyone who gets in our way. Does that sound about right?
Now you know why trolls like #3 say the shit they say. They literally do not care, because they are the typical ugly American trash.
Human life is not particularly valuable unless it is yours or your family’s. Except as a commodity.
These particular lives have no resale value. And are defective to begin with. Therefore, whatever becomes of them is unimportant.
@11,
I don’t think they were under lax watch. I think they were murdered by their prison guards who then conspired to cover it up. I just don’t care.
@13:
“… I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others’? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as immoral’ or ‘bad?”
The videos and transcripts were burned by Dick Cheney during the Fire in his office.
You’ll never get them.
Fuck Barack W. Obama and his supporters for torturing innocent people.
@17,
Obama derangement syndrome destroying your brain? The murders were committed in 2006.
@15,
Yep that sounds about righ….oh wait, TED BUNDY!? Oh SNAP! I’m like a serial killer!
Ohhh noeeesss!
Oh wait: exterminating some terrorists isn’t the same as raping and murdering innocent sorority girls? Oh yeah. That.
@19- Except you just said you don’t care if innocent people are tortured and murdered. Make up your mind.
He also said that they weren’t necessarily terrorists.
He’s not even a good troll.
No, I think they were terrorists. But I am allowing as to the infinitesimal possibility that they were unlucky innocents. You think there aren’t innocent people serving life in solitary here in the USA? You think that isn’t torture?