New documents: Guantanamo authorities expected detainees to die
A newly declassified document, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, confirms that weeks after Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo started to receive detainees, Department of Defense officials expected some of these prisoners to die. Camp authorities were also informed that burial at the U.S.-run naval base in Cuba was “authorized for detainees.”
According to a February 4, 2002 directive to Camp X-Ray from the Mortuary Affairs division at Guantanamo’s new JTF-160 medical department, “As a consequence of disease, battle injury, and non-battle injury it is assumed that some loss of life may occur among detainees.”
This directive was released in response to a FOIA request I made in 2013, using the Muckrock News website.
“Detainees have died”
This newly released memo lends credence to my December 2010 report on early deaths at Guantanamo. My report described how at a February 19, 2002 meeting of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board, a key Navy official announced that as regards Guantanamo, “[a] number of the detainees have died of the wounds that they arrived with.”
