Soldiers: Gitmo 'Suicides' Covered Up

The suicides of three detainees at Guantanamo Bay in 2006 weren’t really suicides at all, according to four soldiers who spoke to Harper’s magazine. The Navy investigated the men’s deaths and said the alleged suicides were “simply unbelievable”—detainees supposedly bound their own hands, stuffed rags down their throats, and then hung themselves with bedsheets from the top of an eight-foot mesh wall simultaneously. The soldiers say that’s because the report is not true. Retelling what they allege actually happened, the soldiers say there was a black site at the detention camp, and that the men “died because they had rags stuffed down their throats.” (Another detainee said in a federal affidavit that he was beaten, and when “he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.”) The Gitmo commander told soldiers that the men killed themselves by swallowing rags, but the media would be told they hung themselves. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” the commander announced, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” “Furthermore,” Harper’s says, “new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a coverup.”