The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Dead Prisoners and Deceptive Headlines
by Harold C. Hutchison
April 5, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
Not all prisoner deaths are the same, but you'd never know this from what you
read in the news. Recent reports on deaths of prisoners in U.S. custody will
give people the wrong impression about the number of suspected terrorists being
killed without justification. The figure often quoted (at least 108), however,
is deceptively high. It includes a number of prisoners who were killed in an
insurgent attack (mortar shells hit the prison, killing 22 inmates) and
prisoners who died of natural causes or in accidents (one notable death from
natural causes was Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking).
These two subsets account for 51 of the fatalities in U.S. custody. This reduces
the total of violent deaths to 57. Out of these, only 26 are being investigated
as possible crimes. The remainder were investigated, and the deaths were ruled
justifiable homicide (a total of 31, if one accepts the total of
108).
The United States has taken abuse of prisoners very seriously. In
one recent case, a Marine officer is being investigated over the shooting deaths
of two prisoners. In another incident, an Army platoon leader has made a deal
with military prosecutors – he will cooperate in investigating a company
commander who allegedly ordered some murders during a raid in response to mortar
attacks that killed another officer. That officer and several others have
already been punished for attempting to cover up an incident where two prisoners
were forced off a ledge at gunpoint. The Abu Ghraib incident, that was huge news
last year, was already under investigation when details were leaked to the
press. Another fact to be noted is that these abuses have often been reported by
fellow soldiers. The Abu Ghraib case is a prime example – one of the members of
the unit delivered the evidence to people up the chain of command.
For
comparison, prisons in the United States have a much higher rate of deaths. In
2002, federal prisons had 335 prisoners in custody die from all causes. State
prisons had 3,105 deaths in that same timeframe. This is a total of 3,440 deaths
in custody. It should be noted that eight states in 2002 had higher totals of
deaths in custody than the U.S. military had has in Iraq and Afghanistan over
the entire war on terrorism. Removing the 22 killed in the insurgent mortar
attack, the number of states with higher death rates increases to ten. Other
countries have had problems with deaths in prisons – in 2003, the United Kingdom
recorded 171 deaths in custody (94 suicides, one prison homicide, and 76 of
natural causes). France had 118 suicides in prison in 1999.
Clearly, this
is a case where the figures are accurate, but are being used to paint a false
picture of the situation. This will not stop new efforts to wage lawfare against
the military. This will be a huge hassle for the United States as the war on
terror continues.
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