Oath Betrayed by Steven Miles

Author:Steven Miles
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781588365620
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

“NATURAL DEATHS”

It is neither surprising, nor entirely avoidable, that some homicides are misclassified as natural deaths. Many death certificates assert that prisoners died “natural” deaths from heart attacks. The forensic investigators do not seem to explore the relationship between mistreatment and lethal heart attacks caused by stress. Scientific research shows that arrest, threats, beatings, fear, and police interrogation can all cause “homicide by heart attack,” or life-threatening heart failure. People with preexisting heart disease, dehydration, hyperthermia, or exhaustion are especially at risk.46–50 Some “natural” heart attacks have followed harsh treatment during arrest. A typically sketchy Army report notes,

Detainee Death during weekend combat. During a jointly conducted, Army led raid this past weekend of a house in Iraq…an Iraqi who was detained and “zip-locked” [flexi-cuffed with plastic bands tying his wrists together] died while in custody. Preliminary information is that the detainee died from an apparent heart attack.51

Human rights organizations have described similar events. For example, Human Rights Watch reports that soldiers detained Sher Mohammad Khan in Afghanistan in September 2004. Shortly thereafter, his bruised body was given to his family. Military officials told journalists that he had died of a heart attack within hours of being taken into custody. No investigative record, autopsy, or death certificate is available.52 The Christian Peacemaker Team describes a similar event that also suggests stress-induced heart attack. On December 21, 2003, soldiers burst into the home of Mehadi Al Jamal, a retired land surveyor who had lost an election because he was not a member of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party. The seventy-year-old man had had a hip replacement and walked with a cane. His son reported,

They pushed him like a criminal; they didn’t let him use his cane because his hands were tied. They handcuffed and put plastic hoods on my father, my uncle and my brother. I heard my father say, “I can’t breathe.”…They pushed him into the vehicle. My father was in very bad condition at that time. He couldn’t talk because of the bag…. I could hear him gasping…. After that, my father stopped moving…. [An] officer told me my father died from a heart attack.53

Abed Al Razak was treated at the Abu Ghraib hospital in mid-2004, for an unspecified cardiac condition, several days before he suddenly died. Investigators carefully documented the attempted resuscitation and they noted that the body bore “no apparent signs of extraordinary trauma or injury” but they did not record whether a sandbag over his head might have impaired his breathing or prevented him from exhaling heat. It is not known whether he was subject to prolonged stress positions, Fear Up Harsh, heat or cold exposure, sleep deprivation, shouted threats, continuous loud noise, or sexual humiliation, or whether he saw a relative being beaten.54

Exposure to heat and cold can also cause deaths that appear to be due to natural causes. Many prisoners were forced to “stand, sit, squat, or lie down in the sand under the sun for up to three or four hours.”55 The death certificate of

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