The US military insists three men who died in Guantanamo were suicides, but our correspondent is not convinced

February 8, 2010

During the night of June 9-10, 2006, something nightmarish happened in the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Three prisoners, we were told, had committed suicide simultaneously by hanging themselves in their cells. Rear Admiral Harry Harris explained it thus: "This was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare committed against us." A Bush administration official said the suicides — one by a man captured at 17, charged with no crime and scheduled for release — was "a good PR move". At the time I remember thinking how off-key that sounded in response to three suicides. But then I moved on.

The US Naval Criminal Investigative Service took two years to complete an inquiry which came to the same conclusion as Harris immediately after the event. There have been many suicide attempts at Gitmo and hunger strikes. And collective suicide by terrorists is not unknown. Members of the BaaderMeinhof gang killed themselves in Stammheim prison in 1977. But that was accomplished by gunshots, impossible in such a tightly controlled jail as Gitmo. And the Alpha Block where their bodies were allegedly discovered is supposed to be closely monitored, with guard checks of every cell required every 10 minutes.

There were five guards for 28 prisoners. And yet the NCIS report found that the bodies were not discovered for two hours. More to the point, none of the guards on duty was ever disciplined for negligence, a baffling decision after such a massive and embarrassing breach in protocol.

The NCIS report was 1,700 pages long and heavily redacted. It was released only by court order through a freedom of information request. Last autumn a group of students at Seton Hall University law school undertook a thorough assessment of the report and found its conclusions incredible. I’ve read the full report. It’s bizarre.

The report claimed that the three men — not in adjoining cells — braided a noose from their sheets or clothing, attached them to the top of a wire mesh wall, hung sheets to prevent the guards seeing into their cells, bundled other sheets up to make it look as if they were in bed, bound their own hands and feet, tied cloths over their faces like a mask to muffle any sound they might make as they died, then climbed onto their sinks, or by some other means hanged themselves, swinging there for two full hours before being found. When discovered, the military said that rags were stuffed down their throats. They claimed these were the remnants of the cloth masks which had been "inhaled as a natural reaction to death by asphyxiation".

Guards were immediately ordered not to write reports on the incident; some were warned that they had already made statements that the command viewed as untrue; the videotape of the cell block was impounded and the military stated that it contained nothing of any evidentiary value. A month later, half a ton of records were confiscated from all the prisoners’ lawyers — including those covered by attorney-client privilege — to find evidence of a co-ordinated plot. The military stated that suicide notes were found on the prisoners. When one of these notes was shown to the father of the youngest of the three — Yasser al-Zahrani — he replied: "This is a forgery." The father also claims he saw needle marks on his 21-year-old son’s arms, when the mutilated corpse was returned to him.

When the bodies of the men were returned to their families, more surrealism: their necks, hearts and kidneys had all been removed, rendering a second autopsy examination impossible. Analysis of the necks would be crucial to determining a death by hanging. One prisoner had a broken hyoid bone, which the military claimed occurred accidentally when they were removing the neck for the examination.

Dr Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner for New York city, told Harper’s Magazine that "a fracture of the hyoid bone occurs more commonly in homicidal manual strangulation than in suicidal hanging". How it happened in an autopsy is never explained. The military denied that the families had requested the missing organs. One of the families has produced the letter requesting them, delivered to the US authorities, dated June 29, 2006.

All of this would be bizarre enough, but in the new issue of Harper’s four members of the military intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta provide a very different account of what occurred. The most critical is a decorated noncommissioned army officer, Joe Hickman, who was on duty as sergeant of the guard on the night of June 9. None — amazingly — had been interviewed in the NCIS report.

Hickman was inspired to join the military by Ronald Reagan, whom he describes as "the greatest president we’ve ever had". He kept silent until the Obama administration. He says he saw a paddy wagon transport three prisoners from their cell blocks in Camp 1 to a facility outside the perimeter of the main camp late that night. He claims the facility was known in Gitmo as Camp No, as in "No, it doesn’t exist". Google Maps shows such a facility. Hours later he says he observed the paddy wagon returning — to the clinic. Another soldier, Christopher Penvose, says he was then told by an agitated NCO to give a codeword to a female officer in the chow hall. When he did so, he says she got up immediately and rushed out. Half an hour later the entire camp lit up with a rush of personnel centred on the clinic.

Hickman, concerned that something had happened on his watch, says he hurried to the clinic. From Harper’s: "He asked a distraught medical corps man what had happened. She said three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic. Hickman recalled her saying that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats and that one of them was severely bruised."

Another guard that night confirms that is what he learnt as well. Two guards in watchtowers also confirmed to Harper’s that they saw no transport of prisoners from Camp 1 to the clinic that night. At 7am the next day, according to independent interviews with several soldiers, a senior officer gave a speech to about 50 troops telling them "you all know" that three prisoners died by having rags stuffed down their throats the previous night, but the official story would be suicide by hanging.

What really happened? I do not know. But it seems to me that these credible witnesses should have at least been interviewed by the NCIS; that the official story has gaping holes of logic; that the autopsies are beyond bizarre; and that the slightest possibility that something is amiss requires further investigation. If there is any chance that these prisoners were accidentally tortured to death and their deaths then covered up as suicide, this is the biggest story in the grim annals of the Bush-Cheney era since Abu Ghraib. And yet, other than to carry a brief synopsis from Associated Press, no main US newspaper has delved into the Harper’s cover-story.

And indeed, a year ago Hickman and his fellows went to Obama’s justice department to explain what they believed needed to be investigated further. The FBI interviewed other witnesses who backed Hickman up. Last November, after months of waiting for a response, Hickman’s lawyer got a call from the justice department. The case was closed. The NCIS report stood. When Hickman’s lawyer asked why, he was told that Hickman’s conclusions "appeared" to be unsupported.

This is the change we were asked to believe in.