We know his name because he stepped forward with his knowledge into the bright daylight. He wasn't grinding an axe, he was just doing his duty. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman was inspired to enlist by "the greatest president we have ever had," which to him was Ronald Reagan. As a model soldier, he earned the honor of serving four years on Reagan's Presidential Guard. What he saw in his role as guard on the night of June 9, 2006 contradicts sharply the claims made by a recent anonymous diarist who claims Guantanamo, after a rough start, was ship-shape and Geneva-friendly by 2006.
My ex-wife represents a detainee at Guantanamo, so I know something about the circumstances of that particular prisoner. Again, the circumstances of his detention sharply contradict the soothing claims recently made by an anonymous blogger.
I am writing this diary because I am deeply offended by the politicizing of war crimes, by excuses made for the utter failure of the Obama administration either to close Guantanamo or to investigate even a small subset of probable torturing and murder, either during the previous administration or, more recently, since this administration took the reigns of power while singing the song of change.
My ex-wife represents Abdul Aziz Naji, who has spent over seven years of his life being detained without charges, without trial, apparently without even having any evidence against him. For years he has been cleared to leave Guantanamo. Unlike the prisoners the other diarist described, Aziz does not talk about killing Americans because of his religion, despite being a devout Muslim.
Miraculously, he has not lost his mind as a result of his treatment. If released back to his country of origin, Algeria, he would likely either be incarcerated and tortured there or aggressively recruited by terrorists. But he would choose that in a second, just for the chance to see his mother one more time and perhaps to have one more of his favorite meals. He is a mild-mannered person of faith who is deeply grateful to my ex-wife and her partner every time they visit him. He always expresses concern for his mother. Once, in a typically desperate effort to get some kind of information from this random Muslim who had been turned in for money, Aziz was told that his best friend had died while killing others as a suicide bomber. Aziz was heartbroken, but still had no information to offer, a predictable outcome given that his friend was not, and had never been, either a suicide bomber or any other kind of terrorist.
Abdul Aziz Naji's life has been ruined by an arrogant country that thinks its own confusion in the face of threats justifies tossing out centuries of legal precedent. He is not spending time in the Bahamas, as the other diary claims has happened with some prisoners. No, Aziz spends virtually all of his time alone in a windowless cell.
Is this a complicated situation, just too difficult to work through? Not if you believe in the rule of law, it's not. In a society of laws, you don't arrogantly wonder what to do--you do what the law requires. This is neither ambiguous nor even especially complicated. On the other hand, if you think the government enjoys the tyrannical power of treating people as it sees fit according to changing circumstances, then perhaps you find the situation at Guantanamo to be conveniently confusing.
Now on to Staff Sargent Hickman and what the events of June 9 tell us about the real situation at Guantanamo. The Seton Hall University School of Law’s Center for Policy & Research, who have worked tirelessly to expose the recent war crimes of the United States government, has conducted as thorough an investigation as they could into the events of that night. Scott Horton followed up with his own investigative report in Harpers, one of the few publications to give this shameful episode any attention. What was found belies the reassuring words of the recent rec listed diary.
On June 9, 2006, the U.S. government claims, three separate Guantanamo prisoners committed suicide. The proposed details both of their method of committing suicide and of the response of the guards go into the absurd. In addition, the events following that night suggest about as blatant and sloppy cover-up as one can imagine. And yet, it appears they will get away with it. But it won't be because of the silence and complicity of four U.S. soldiers who stepped forward on the assumption that the government they had pledged their lives to serve is devoted to the rule of law and to basic human decency. So far, these soldiers have been disappointed.
Hickman had guard duty the night of June 9, and being the good soldier he was, he saw a lot. For his version of that night, please read the article in Harpers. I will simply summarize, letting a few damning details stand for the mountain of others. But first, here is the start of the government's absurdity, thanks to the investigators at Seton Hall:
The three detainees were each reported to have been found hanging in his separate cell shortly after midnight on June 10, 2006. According to the government’s own autopsies, each detainee had been hanging unobserved for a minimum of two hours. The deaths went unnoticed despite the constant supervision of five guards who were responsible for only 28 inmates in a lit cell block monitored by video cameras. According to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), each detainee should have been observed a minimum of once every 10 minutes by the guards. Despite clear violations of the SOP, no guards were ever disciplined.
CAMP IN DISARRAY
Buried in the investigation are details of a camp in total disarray. According to Professor Mark Denbeaux, Director of the Center for Policy & Research, the investigation shows "guards not on duty, detainees hanging dead in their cells for hours and guards leaving their posts to eat the detainees’ leftover food." During initial investigation interviews immediately following the deaths, those guards on duty were warned that they were suspected of giving false statements and were even read their Miranda rights. These guards were also ordered to not write out sworn statements, even though SOPs demanded they should.
snip
Taking the military investigation’s findings as truthful and complete, in order to have committed suicide by hanging, the detainees had to:
1. Braid a noose by tearing up their sheets and/or clothing
2. Make mannequins of themselves so it would appear to the guards they were asleep in their cells
3. Hang sheets to block the view into the cells, in violation of SOPs
4. Stuff rags down their own throats
5. Tie their own feet together
6. Tie their own hands together
7. Hang the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling
8. Climb up on to the sink, put the noose around their necks and release their weight, resulting in death by strangulation
9. Hang dead for at least two hours completely unnoticed by guards
Seton Hall Law student, co-author of Death in Camp Delta, and former Sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division, Paul W. Taylor added: "We have three dead bodies and no explanation. How is it possible that all three detainees had shoved rags so far down their own throats that medical personnel could not remove them? . . .
Here is the executive summary of the report. Two other pieces of information: when the bodies were submitted for autopsy, they showed evidence of torture and the throat organs had been removed. Also, the rags in the throats are consistent with waterboarding, a torture technique and war crime which the other diarist claims was no longer practiced in 2006.
The other diarist failed to mention "Camp No" a separate compound on the edge of Guantanamo hidden from the rest of the camp by a ridge. It was named Camp No by Hickman's friend, Specialist Tony Davila, because they were told they would have to say, "No" if anyone asked if it exists. From his observations, Hickman estimated Camp No could hold as many as 80 prisoners, it had buildings identical to the interrogation buildings in the other compounds, and he once heard screams there. Camp No has never been opened to inspection or observation by any outside body. In addition, the guards were instructed never to log in the movements of a white van which took prisoners between Camp No and the rest of Guantanamo.
On June 9, Hickman observed the white van drive to the main compound, pick up a prisoner, and drive to Camp No on three separate occasions, transporting three prisoners. Around four hours later, the van returned and backed up to the infirmary as if to deliver a cargo. An hour later, an hour before the first body is supposed to have been discovered, an agitated senior Navy NCO told Army Specialist Christopher Penvose to deliver a specific code word to a senior petty officer dining in the chow hall. Upon hearing the word, the petty officer jumped up and ran out of the hall. About thirty minutes later, the whole camp lit up. The real story of what happened that night continues in like vein, painting a classic picture of murder followed by cover-up.
All four soldiers who have come forward were told by their commanding officer not to talk. All four saw evidence of a cover-up that night. Even though he left Guantanamo with a commendation medal and the honor of being named "NCO of the Quarter," Hickman was bothered about what had happened on his watch. When Obama was elected, Hickman felt it was time to turn his incriminating testimony over to the new DOJ.
After reading the Seton Hall report on the "suicides," Hickman contacted the lawyers, telling them he knew things they did not know. The Seton Hall lawyers, father and son Denbeaux's agreed to assist Hickman in his desire to see a proper investigation. Here is how the Obama DOJ responded:
For more than an hour, the two lawyers described what Hickman had seen: the existence of Camp No, the transportation of the three prisoners, the van’s arrival at the medical clinic, the lack of evidence that any bodies had ever been removed from Alpha Block, and so on. The [Obama DOJ] officials listened intently and asked many questions. The Denbeauxes said they could provide a list of witnesses who would corroborate every aspect of their account. At the end of the meeting, Mark Denbeaux recalled, the officials specifically thanked the lawyers for not speaking to reporters first and for "doing it the right way."
Two days later, another Justice Department official, Teresa McHenry [Harpers later emended this to be a representative of Mchenry), head of the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section, called Mark Denbeaux and said that she was heading up an investigation and wanted to meet directly with his client. She went to New Jersey to do so. Hickman then reviewed the basic facts and furnished McHenry with the promised list of corroborating witnesses and details on how they could be contacted.
The Denbeauxes did not hear from anyone at the Justice Department for at least two months. Then, in April, an FBI agent called to say she did not have the list of contacts. She asked if this document could be provided again. It was. Shortly thereafter, Fagell a Justice official [see update] and two FBI agents interviewed Davila, who had left the Army, in Columbia, South Carolina. Fagell The official asked Davila if he was prepared to travel to Guantánamo to identify the locations of various sites. He said he was. "It seemed like they were interested," Davila told me. "Then I never heard from them again."
Several more months passed, and Hickman and his lawyers became increasingly concerned that nothing was going to happen. On October 27, 2009, they resumed dealings with Congress that they had initiated on February 2 and then broken off at the Justice Department’s request; they were also in contact with ABC News. Two days later, Teresa McHenry called Mark Denbeaux and asked whether he had gone to Congress and ABC News about the matter. "I said that I had," Denbeaux told me. He asked her, "Was there anything wrong with that?" McHenry then suggested that the investigation was finished. Denbeaux reminded her that she had yet to interview some of the corroborating witnesses. "There are a few small things to do," Denbeaux says McHenry answered. "Then it will be finished."
Specialist Christopher Penvose told me that on October 30, the day following the conversation between Mark Denbeaux and Teresa McHenry, McHenry an official [see update] showed up at Penvose’s home in south Baltimore with some FBI agents. She had a "few questions," she told him. Investigators working with her soon contacted two other witnesses.
On November 2, 2009, McHenry called Mark Denbeaux to tell him that the Justice Department’s investigation was being closed. "It was a strange conversation," Denbeaux recalled. McHenry explained that "the gist of Sergeant Hickman’s information could not be confirmed." But when Denbeaux asked what that "gist" actually was, McHenry declined to say. She just reiterated that Hickman’s conclusions "appeared" to be unsupported. Denbeaux asked what conclusions exactly were unsupported. McHenry refused to say.
snip
The Justice Department thus faced a dilemma; it could do the politically convenient thing, which was to find no justification for a thorough investigation, leave the NCIS conclusions in place, and hope that the public and the news media would obey the Obama Administration’s dictum to "look forward, not backward"; or it could pursue a course of action that would implicate the Bush Justice Department in a cover-up of possible homicides.
Nearly 200 men remain imprisoned at Guantánamo. In June 2009, six months after Barack Obama took office, one of them, a thirty-one-year-old Yemeni named Muhammed Abdallah Salih, was found dead in his cell. The exact circumstances of his death, like those of the deaths of the three men from Alpha Block, remain uncertain. Those charged with accounting for what happened—the prison command, the civilian and military investigative agencies, the Justice Department, and ultimately the attorney general himself—all face a choice between the rule of law and the expedience of political silence. Thus far, their choice has been unanimous.
Following this article, Harpers received a letter from an independent witness to the existence of Camp No:
As an environmental consultant for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, I worked at Guantánamo Bay in August 2003 and February 2004. While mapping the habitat around the base, I saw a facility nestled between some hills that matches Scott Horton’s description of "Camp No."
After setting out from Camp Delta, my colleagues and I pulled off the main road and onto a trail that went precariously up a ragged slope to a ridge. From our perch on the Humvee, we could see, across the valleys and hillsides surrounding the base, the facility down in the valley. The soldiers escorting us said it was part of the camps, though it was separated from the others by the ridge. We were also told not to take any pictures of it, even though I was allowed to take pictures everywhere else.
It was a great relief when Scott Horton corroborated my observations in his story for Harper’s Magazine. For some time now I have been wondering, What was this site? Was this where torture occurred?
David J. Evans
Garland, Tex.
Unlike the diarist who describes Guantanamo as a well-regulated prison with understandable difficulties in freeing men who are being held outside any recognized system of law, this Texan chooses to tell us his name.
Update: This sentence has cause some concern in the comments:
Unlike the prisoners the other diarist described, Aziz does not talk about killing Americans because of his religion, despite being a devout Muslim.
This is a direct response to this sentence from the sock puppet diary:
What they have confronted is a horrible reality: many, many of the people who remain there are bad, dangerous guys. They openly talk about their desire to slaughter Americans, not because of their captivity but because of their belief that their faith calls for it. And there are the HVD's - high value detainees -- who were discussed by Bush in his August, 2006 speech. Those guys are never going anywhere, particularly since they are always so eager to proclaim their guilt.
Perhaps "despite" was a bad choice of words for making my meaning clear. My firm intention is to dispel this notion that being Muslim means hating Americans, although if I were Muslim, I might be struggling with that idea myself right now. Since I've been accused of this, I'll be perfectly clear. The point is not that Aziz is an exception to the rule. The point is that Muslims are not, as a group, driven by hatred and desire to kill others. Quite the contrary. At its very founding, Mohammed instructed his followers to sit peacefully and not fight those who had come to fight them. The contention by the original diarist was nothing more than cheap war propaganda, which seeks to demonize foes into less than human. This is despicable. My statement is intended to state the precise opposite--Islam is no more a religion that encourages hatred and killing than Christianity is a religion that encourages occupation of foreign countries.