Posted below is a fair use snippet from the beginning of the article, but readers are strongly encouraged to click through and read the entire story itself. It is an extremely sad story of a man repeatedly tortured over his 10+ years at Guantanamo (and new details of this appear in the story). But it is also extremely sad to think we live in a country where the citizens allow their politicians and military to pursue such crimes without accountability.
Latif Letter About Guantanamo Speaks From the Grave: "I Am Being Pushed Toward Death Every Moment"
By Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout, December 10, 2012
Explosive claims in a letter to his lawyers reveal a Gitmo detainee's fears about his captors' intentions, well in advance of his mysterious death. Meanwhile, the investigation into his apparent suicide centers on the protocols meant to prevent it.
More than two years before he was found dead in his cell at Guantanamo Bay, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif reported that the people who oversaw his every move were facilitating his demise.Click here to read the entire story
In a letter sent to his attorneys on May 28, 2010, the Yemeni detainee claimed he was given "contraband" items, such as a spoon and a "big pair of scissors ... by the person responsible for Camp 5," where uncooperative prisoners are sent.
"I am being pushed toward death every moment," Latif wrote to human rights attorneys David Remes and Marc Falkoff. The communication was written in Arabic and translated into English by a translator Remes has worked with for nearly a decade.
"The way they deal with me proves to me that they want to get rid of me, but in a way that they cannot be accused of causing it," Latif wrote.
On September 8, Latif was found "motionless and unresponsive" by guards in a cell in the very same Camp 5 cellblock he had cited in his letter. Two months later, the military produced a report that said he committed suicide.
The mystery surrounding the death of the eldest son of a Yemeni merchant who, by all accounts, did not belong at the offshore prison for suspected terrorists, is underscored by the almost prophetic nature of this singular letter.
The question that likely will never be answered is whether it is a true representation of his experiences, the paranoid creation of an unstable mind or the cunning fabrications of an angry man, captured and sold into bondage by post-9/11 bounty hunters.
That answer may have died with Latif, but there is a measure of corroboration for at least some of his claims, and more questions have been raised as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) continue to probe the circumstances surrounding his death.
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