Guantanamo Detainee Deaths: Responding to the Defense Department’s Whitewash http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/guantanamo-detainee-deaths-responding-to-the-defense-departments-whitewash/

In its December report, CP&R asked key unanswered questions, including: – the time and exact means of death; – how the dead men braided a noose using torn up sheets and/or clothing unobserved and made mannequins of themselves to look like asleep bodies in bed; – hung sheets to obstruct viewing into their cells; – stuffed rags down their throats to choke; – tied their hands and feet together; – hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall or ceiling; – climbed on a sink, placed the noose around their necks, released their weight, and were strangled; and – did all this unobserved for two or more hours.

DOD Statement: “The bodies were thoroughly examined for signs of torture. None was found.”Autopsy reports and the NCIS statement of findings said nothing about torture. “None of the statements in the investigation file mentions torture.” The investigation only tried to determine if all deaths were suicides and began with that “predetermined conclusion.”

International law expert Francis Boyle denounced the designation, calling it a: “quasi-category (of) legal nihilism where human beings (including US citizens) can be disappeared, detained incommunicado, denied access to attorneys and regular courts, tried by kangaroo courts, executed, tortured, assassinated and subjected to numerous other manifestations of State Terrorism” on the pretext of protecting national security.

What George Bush began, Obama continues, including at Guantanamo, despite issuing January Executive Orders banning torture, ordering the facility closed, and directing the CIA to shut its secret prison network.That was then. This is now. Political persecutions, extraordinary renditions, secret detentions, kangaroo court justice, and torture remain official US policy as part of the administration’s permanent war agenda and continued “war on terror,” renamed the “Overseas Contingency Operation.”