Viraj's Weblog

Another appalling excerpt from Steven Miles' Oath Betrayed:

Abdureda Lafta Abdul Kareem (also known as Abu Malik Kenami) was admitted to Mosul prison on December 5, 2003, and died four days later. Military investigators found that the short, stocky, forty-four-year-old man weighed 175 pounds. He was not medically examined before his harsh treatment. After he was interrogated, soldiers put a sandbag over his head. When he tried to remove it, the guards made him jump up and down for twenty minutes with his wrists tied in front of him, and then for twenty minutes with his wrists bound behind his back with a plastic binder. The bound and head-bagged man was put on a mat for the night in a cell that was built for thirty prisoners but packed with sixty-six men. He was restless and "jibbering in Arabic." The guards told him to be quiet. The next morning, he was dead. Guards, medics, and two physicians noted that his eyes were very bloodshot. There were lacerations on his wrists from the plastic ties, unexplained bruises on his abdomen, and a fresh, bruised laceration on the back of his head. Army investigators noted that the body did not have defensive bruises on the arms - an odd notation, given that a man whose arms are bound behind his back cannot raise them in defense. No autopsy was performed. The death certificate lists the cause of death as "unknown." The physician at the scene surmised that Mr. Kenami died of a heart attack. It seems more likely that he suffocated because of the combined effects of how he was restrained, hooded, and positioned. Positional asphyxia looks just like death by a natural heart attack except for those telltale bloodshot eyes, which indicate conjunctival hemorrhage. Perhaps his "jibbering" was calling out for air. There are other similar cases of sudden deaths of men with little evidence of cardiac disease who were found to have unexplained facial venous congestion or pulmonary edema, also suggestive of asphyxia.