The Dog knows that today will mostly be consumed with the Massachusetts Senate special election, but there are things going on in the realm of the Bush administrations war crimes that need to be discussed. Yesterday Scott Horton of Harper's magazine published some new reporting on the June 9th 2006 "suicides" at Guantanamo Bay which highlights the need for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to fully investigate the detention and torture of prisoners.
"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
Something happened on the night of June 9th 2006. Three men died, their deaths were ruled suicides even though a Harper's says in his article:
According to the NCIS, 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.
This is equivalent to the Magic Bullet theory of the Kennedy assignation; it could happen, but the odds of it are so low that it strains credulity. If this is really how these men died, then everyone reading this is likely to be able to pick the winning Lotto numbers any time they like. The odds are just too high.
Also on that same night, Shaker Aamer, another Guantanamo prisoner says he was severely beaten for over two hours. Mr. Aamer says of his beating that night:
On June 9th, 2006, [Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.
What is particularly troubling is the similarities between Mr. Aamer’s treatment and the condition that the three dead prisoners were found in. They all had their airways cut off, and at least two of them had on masks on when they were found. This tends to indicate that some kind of serious effort was being made on these four that night. What did these men have in common? They were all involved in the hunger strike (the dead three were hunger strikers, while Mr. Aamer had tried to negotiate an end to the strikes). None of them had been charged with a crime and all had contended that they had been sold the U.S. troops for a bounty and had not been involved in fighting for the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
In addition to these facts this article also details a new Black Site at Guantanamo Bay. The so-called Camp No was outside the normal parameters of the Camp America prison facility. This camp was an open secret to the troops guarding Camp America, and got its name because whenever anyone asked if it existed the answer would be "No it doesn’t".
A very credible witness a Staff Sergeant Joe Hickman has given evidence to the DOJ and to Harpers that on the night the deaths happened there were three trips by a van that was ordered not to be searched from Camp America to Camp No. They all happened prior to 8pm that evening.
In the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report, it is claimed that all three prisoners were found, then moved quickly to the clinic at Camp Delta. The problem is soldiers on patrol that night, who would have a direct line of sight to any movement of prisoners to and from the clinic have testified they saw nothing. Further, Sgt. Hickman himself saw the same white van come from Camp No and back up to the clinic like it was unloading something, before alert resulting from the finding of the bodies.
If this seems like a cover up, it gets worse. The military did autopsies on all three, but they did not do them with trained forensic pathologists. The throats and neck organs of all three men were removed and have never been made available to the independent autopsies that the families insisted on. The report says that one of the men had a broken hyoid bone, which is consistent with strangulation, not hanging, but no one other than those first examiners have ever seen the actual organs.
There was an investigation, during the Bush administration. But it too is has major problems. Troops were told in the morning that the prisoners had died because of rags in their throats, but that the final report would say they hung themselves. They were told not to say anything about the discrepancy by their commander Col. Bumgarner. It was not an order but the Colonel did mention that all phone and e-mail communications would be monitored. You can see how it would have the force of an order or a threat with that kind of epilog.
This is where it gets really troubling. After the inauguration of President Obama, Sgt. Hickman went to Congress and the DoJ thinking there would be more done about this in a new administration. He talked to the DoJ and they investigated, but went no where with it. When he followed up that some witnesses he had brought forward had not been interviewed, they were and the case was basically closed. When Sgt. Hickman went to ABC and back to Congress he got a call from the DoJ asking if he had talked to Congress. He told them since they had said the investigation was over he thought it was okay.
Now we get to the meat of the problem for the DoJ and, perhaps AG Holder himself. There is a crime called Accessory After The Fact. If, after you have knowledge of a felony you help the person or persons who committed the felony avoid detection, capture, or prosecution, you are guilty of Accessory After The Fact. It is a felony to torture. It is a felony to kill someone by torture. It is a felony to provide false statements in a criminal investigation. It is a felony to kill someone.
Regardless of the specious and contemptible Yoo and Bybee memos, what happened to these men is likely to be war crimes and felonies. If the staff in the DoJ and the AG himself are aware of these crimes and are not bringing them forward, they are in all likelihood felons after the fact.
The Dog has been calling for a Special Prosecutor for more than a year. It is clear there is a whole realm of dark acts that we have yet to untangle and given the totally compromised nature of the DoJ in the Bush administration there is very little chance that it can be investigated fully by internal investigations. This new information throws some light on why the Office of Professional Responsibility report on Yoo and Bybee has been delayed and delayed again. It also make sense, if this Camp No was a CIA black site why the Intelligence Committee Report from Senator Feinstein has not been completed.
These reports would, of necessity bring parts of these issues forward and the clothe of secrecy that has shrouded the criminal Bush administration state sponsored torture program would unravel even more.
The time has come to come clean. The Obama Administration risks being drawn into the same cult of criminality that the Bush Administration crated if they do not act to punish a wide spread set of crimes. This is not over by a far cry, and the Dog will stay on top of it.
The floor is yours.
Post Script:
Several commenters have pointed out that the Dog is probably wrong about the accessory after the fact for AG Holder. Maybe, this issue gets the old hound spun up to the point where he engages in hyperbole (not his usual style). If so, I am sorry. Still there are others who should be investigated for that crime. The colonel at Gitmo, for starters.