Three Gitmo Deaths, Multiple Questions

December 07, 2009  |  Posted by Danielle Belton

Disturbing news from Huffington Post this Monday about a potential cover up of three detainee deaths -- labeled suicides in 2006 -- at the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

From Huffington Post:

On the night of June 9-10 in 2006, three prisoners held at the Guantánamo prison's Camp Delta died under mysterious circumstances. Military authorities responded by quickly ordering media representatives off the island and blocking lawyers from meeting with their clients. The first official military statements declared the deaths not just suicides -- but actually went so far as to describe them as acts of "asymmetrical warfare" against the United States.

Now a 58-page study prepared by law faculty and students at Seton Hall University in New Jersey starkly challenges the Pentagon's claims. It notes serious and unresolved contradictions within a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report -- which was publicly released only in fragmentary form, two years after the fact -- and declares the military's internal investigation an obvious cover-up. The only question is: of what?

This is just another reason why the prison needs to be closed -- lack of transparency, the lack of rules with it being outside of the United States. Word of the study spread quickly on-line. 

In a separate interview, study supervisor Mark Denbeaux said "The most innocent explanation is that this is Gitmo meets Lord of the Flies"

Mother Jones Online reported that Human Rights Watch is calling for the military to release an unredacted report "so that the public can get a better idea of what happened."

From Mother Jones:

"The heavy-handed nature of the redactions to the publicly-released reports of the investigations makes it impossible to get a clear picture of the events of that night. We think that the heavy redactions currently found in the documents—by which names, dates, and other key facts are completely obscured on many pages—raise concerns about whether the military is trying to hide embarrassing facts," an HRW spokeswoman told Horton.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald took on some of the historic stonewalling from the Department of Justice.

From Salon.com:

With revelations of serious, recent abuse at an ongoing "black site" prison in Afghanistan, serious questions have been raised about the extent to which detainee abuse has actually been curbed under Obama.  But there's no question that the single greatest impediment to disclosure and accountability for past abuses is the Obama Justice Department, which has repeatedly gone far beyond the call of duty in its attempt to protect Bush war crimes and other illegal acts.  This new Seton Hall Report regarding these three detainees deaths illustrates not only how perverse and unjust, but also how futile, such efforts are.  War crimes never stay hidden, and the only question from the start was whether the Obama DOJ would be complicit in the attempt to shield them from disclosure.  That question has now been answered rather decisively.

You can read a complete PDF file of the report here.

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