Wearing a Different Hat, Guantanamo Bay

We are all in the habit of living 24 hour days. For nearly three years my hours have been spent vigorously pursuing a legal education. This education has not been limited to class room experience, nor has it been limited to the traditional law school curriculum. In addition to the standard fair, two interests have consumed my focus. The first is exploring issues in law related to music and the internet. This interest is the broad subject matter expressed through this blog. The second interest is investigating the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.
As a research fellow with Seton Hall Law's Center for Policy & Research (CP&R)I have spent thousands of hours researching government documents and records relating to the military base. This work has been poured into several of CP&R's 17 published reports, many of which have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, European Parliament, New York Times, Washington Post, and many more sources. Most recently, CP&R published a report titled "Death in Camp Delta," exploring the events surrounding three alleged suicide deaths that occurred on base during the summer of 2006. The following article is a brief explanation of our lengthy report. On February 16, 2010, a 40 minute interview discussing CP&R's investigation into these events aired on NPR's "The Story." The interview which featured myself, student Kelli Stout, and Professor Mark Denbeaux can be heard here. Furthermore, I encourage you to read the March issue of Harper's Magazine, in which author Scott Horton significantly expands upon CP&R's research.


In Search of Truth at Guantanamo Bay
By Adam Deutsch (written for "The Cross Examiner," Seton Hall Law's internal student news paper)

Shortly after midnight on June 10, 2006, prison guards found three detainees hanging in their cells at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The detainees had been dead for at least two hours. Guards said they were stiff with rigor mortis, cold to the touch, with blue extremities and no pulse.
Later that morning, the Department of Defense (DOD) forced all of the detainees’ attorneys and press members to leave the military base while an investigation began. Contemporaneous to the forced evacuation of non-military personnel, the DOD announced that the detainees had engaged in “acts of asymmetric warfare” against the United States by committing suicide. The government issued this conclusive statement on the cause of death before autopsies were performed, and before persons on duty were interviewed. By holding the early press conference before performing its due diligence, the DOD skewed the objectivity of the subsequent investigation and forever altered the public’s perception of these deaths. It is now clear that the DOD’s final investigation was either grossly incompetent or a concocted cover-up of the truth.
How could three people commit suicide by hanging in one of the most secured prison facilities in the world? In 2008, more than two years after the purported suicides, the DOD released a three-page summary of the Naval Criminal Investigative Task Force (NCIS) investigative findings and a massive, heavily redacted file of investigative interviews and documents. Research fellows at the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research (CP&R), headed by Professor Mark Denbeaux, began analyzing more than 1,000 pages in redacted documents to better understand how the three detainees died.
What the research fellows at CP&R found is remarkable. According to the DOD’s interviews of Guantanamo personnel, each deceased detainee braided a noose by tearing bed sheets and clothing, made a mannequin of himself so it would appear that he was asleep, hung sheets to block guard views of the cell, tied his feet together, tied his hands together, placed cloth in his mouth or throat, hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall, climbed upon the sink basin, put the noose around his neck and released his weight to result in death by strangulation.
According to the base’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), the detainees should not have had possession of enough fabric materials to complete the suicidal act described above. Furthermore, it was an SOP violation to hang a sheet that would obstruct a guard’s view of the detainee cell for more than a few minutes while one used the in-cell toilet. These sheets, like the detainees, hung for more than two hours. The SOPs dictate that guards are to walk the cell block every 10 minutes and take visual count of each detainee. The guards on duty failed to complete this task a minimum of 12 times while the detainees hung dead in their cells.
These details are only the tip of the iceberg. While making sworn statements, several guards were accused of making false statements or failing to obey direct orders. However, not one Guantanamo employee was disciplined for failure to obey the SOPs. Even though the detainees were reportedly found dead beyond the point of resuscitation, they were given invasive medical treatment, which in some cases included use of defibrillating machines, tracheal tubes, catheters and intravenous injections. None of these procedures could have saved the detainees, and yet there has been no explanation as to why post-mortem mutilation of the bodies occurred.
In early December 2009, Seton Hall Law’s CP&R released “Death In Camp Delta,” a report uncovering discrepancies and issues with the DOD’s investigation. Since then, members of Congress have called on Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a new investigation into the DOD investigation, and Harper’s Magazine published an article taking CP&R’s research further. Harper’s author Scott Horton spoke with several people on duty the night of June 9, 2006, who confirmed that the three detainees did not die in the way that has been alleged. Horton found that those guards who were stationed in observation towers, which provided a clear view of the entire camp, did not see any bodies carried out of their cells to the medical facility. Harper’s identified what it believes to be a non-DOD facility at Guantanamo that might be a CIA “dark cite.” It suggests that the detainees died elsewhere on the base, confirming the investigation as a probable cover-up. Horton has thus extended the investigation that Seton Hall’s CP&R began.
“Death In Camp Delta” is the sixteenth report published by CP&R that examines the Guantanamo Bay detention facility operations. These reports are researched and authored by Seton Hall Law students under the guidance of Professor Denbeaux. The reports have been cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, Congressional records, the European Parliament, the New York Times, Washington Post and numerous other academic and periodical sources. While the full truth of what occurred on June 10, 2006 has yet to be uncovered, public dialogue toward ascertaining the truth, with the help of Seton Hall Law’s CP&R, is as vigorous as ever.