Deaths in U.S. Custody
Human Rights First’s review of deaths in U.S. custody includes the case of Fathel Ibrahim Mahmood, who died at Abu Ghraib after allegedly complaining of chest pains in April 2004. A U.S. soldier involved in the Army’s criminal investigation wrote to another soldier in an email “[a]fter looking at all the information I think the US military did this guy a great disservice in not treating him properly…then again…I don’t know if the US had the means to treat this guy properly. Everyone out here in Abu [Ghraib] is short-changed in some capacity.” No autopsy report on Mahmood appears to have been located by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. The investigation determined that further examination “would be of little or no value.”
Human Rights First’s review of deaths in U.S. custody includes the case of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who suffocated to death after two soldiers allegedly stuffed him inside a sleeping bag, wrapped him in an electric cord, sat on him, and blocked his airways. One of the solders, Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, was given a letter of reprimand by his commanding officer, General Swanick. In this memo (right), Welshofer writes a rebuttal to the reprimand; General Swanick’s response, handwritten at the top, is: “Death was from asphyxiation! I expect a better adherence to standards in the future!” Welshofer has since been charged with murder and faces a court martial in January 2005.
Human Rights First’s review of deaths in U.S. custody describes Army investigators’ belated efforts to find out what happened to some detainees whose deaths were never reported and whose cases simply slipped through the cracks. Hadi Abdul Hussain Hasson al-Zubaidy (Hasson) is one of those cases. As this Army investigation report (right) describes, the Army’s eventual efforts to find out what happened to Mr. Hasson went nowhere because U.S. record-keeping about detainees was so poor. As it stands, all we know about Hasson is his name, his identification number and the fact that he died in Iraq, at the Camp Bucca detention facility, some time between April and September 2003.
Read Human Rights First Media Alert on Deaths in U.S. Custody
