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Guantanamo suicides

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New questions are being raised about the deaths of three Guantanamo prisoners in 2006. The US military said the three detainees took their own lives. But attorney Scott Horton says the prisoners were murdered. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with him.

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MARCO WERMAN: New questions are being raised about the deaths of three Guantanamo prisoners in 2006.  The U.S. Military said the three detainees took their own lives after taking part in a hunger strike.  But an article by Attorney Scott Horton released this week by Harper’s Magazine says the prisoners didn’t commit suicide. The article suggests the three men were tortured and murdered at a secret facility.  Scott Horton says the official account of how the prisoners died is problematic.

SCOTT HORTON: The official story is that they took a great amount of cloth and formed mannequins and put them in their beds so as to deceive guards, that they took more cloth and put it over the walls so that the video cameras could not see them. Then they bound their feet with cloth. They tied their hands together with cloth.

WERMAN: They themselves, the detainees, tied their feet and hands together with cloth?
HORTON: Each individually in his own cell far apart from any other detainees. Then they stuffed cloth down their mouth past the point of involuntary gagging.  Then they placed masks over the face to hold that cloth in place. Then they fashioned a noose. They hooked up the noose at the top of a eight-foot wire mesh wall. Then they climbed up while hands and feet were bound, they climbed up on top of a wash basin inserted their heads into the noose, tightened the noose and then jumped off the wash basin so as to asphyxiate themselves.  And that the three prisoners did this simultaneously.

WERMAN: Yeah, physically suicide does seem a problematic proposal here.  Who gave you an alternative account of what happened, and what did they tell you?

HORTON: Well, the alternative account comes from four different soldiers from a Maryland Military Intelligence unit who were manning the guard that evening.  And what they tell us is that three prisoners were taken from this cell block and taken that evening between 7:00 and 8:00 o’clock to a black site facility located about a mile away from Camp Delta.  And they never appeared to have returned alive.  The Sergeant of the Guard that evening was so concerned about this very unusual activity that he went to the outermost perimeter check point to see exactly where this van was taking these prisoners. And he said it took them to Camp No, which was a secret facility a black site.

WERMAN: Now, that perimeter guard you spoke of he’s Sergeant Hickman, is that right?

HORTON: Yes, actually there are four of them but I’d say the core part of the narrative comes from Staff Sergeant Joe Hickman.
WERMAN: Now the former Commander at GITMO’s Camp America denies your account, Colonel Michael Bumgarner appears to have sent an email to the Associated Press saying, “This blatant misrepresentation of the truth infuriates me.  I don’t know who Sergeant Hickman is, but he is only trying to be a spotlight ranger.  He knows nothing about what transpired in Camp One or our medical facility.  I do.  I was there.” So, Scott Horton, why isn’t Sergeant Hickman speaking out on the front pages today?

HORTON: I think you’re going to hear from Sergeant Hickman within the next 24 hours and in great detail.  In fact, Colonel Bumgarner has a very severe problem here because either he told a lie to the Associated Press or he told a lie to the criminal investigators from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, whom he furnished a sworn statement in which he states, “I was not at the camp the evening of 09 June ’06.”

WERMAN: And yet the Justice Department says it has investigated these claims.  It says Hickman’s conclusions appear to be unsupported. So how do you know the Justice Department under President Bush and President Obama didn’t in fact carry out an investigation and find the evidence of murder lacking?

HORTON: I interviewed independently all the witnesses they contacted and interviewed about the Justice Department’s investigation from which it’s completely clear that the Justice Department was engaged in the process of checking off the box so as to be able to suggest to the public that they had done something.  When, in fact, they had done nothing.  The clearest evidence of this comes when after Congressional inquiry the Justice Department lawyer heading the investigation, who by the way, was also a lawyer involved in the preparation of at least one of the major torture memoranda, told the attorney for Sergeant Hickman that the investigation was over. And we know at that time, she and her team had not contacted the principal corroborating witnesses.

WERMAN: Now, this happened on President George W. Bush’s watch, but what was the role, what is the role played by President Obama’s Administration and how does that square with his promise a year ago to close Guantanamo?

HORTON: Well, not just his promise a year ago to close Guantanamo, but also the speech he delivered in Oslo, Norway accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.  He gave a solemn undertaking in giving that speech that the United States would embrace and uphold the value of the Geneva Conventions.  Of course, what we’re talking about here is the death of prisoners in war time.  The fundamental purpose of those conventions is to protect these prisoners. And that protection occurs not just by the rules in place at the facilities, but also by the investigation and punishment of people who wrongfully harm them.

WERMAN: You believe there’s full knowledge of this episode at the White House itself?

HORTON: I am not able to say exactly how high up people were briefed about this. Harper’s Magazine has learned that Attorney General Eric Holder was asked this last weekend if he knew about this investigation and its conclusion and he declined to discuss that.

WERMAN: Scott Horton’s article in Harper’s Magazine is called, “The Guantanamo Suicides:  A Camp Delta Sergeant Blows the Whistle.”  Scott Horton, thanks very much for speaking with us.

HORTON: Great to be with you.

WERMAN: We asked the Justice Department to comment on Scott Horton’s story.  Department spokesperson Laura Sweeney gave us this statement:  “The Department took this matter very seriously.  A number of Department attorneys and agents extensively and thoroughly reviewed the allegations and found no evidence of wrongdoing.”   We also asked the Pentagon and the White House to comment but neither got back to us by airtime.

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