On the night of June 9-10 in 2006, three prisoners held at the Guantánamo prison’s Camp Delta died under mysterious circumstances. Military authorities responded by quickly ordering media representatives off the island and blocking lawyers from meeting with their clients. The first official military statements declared the deaths not just suicides — but actually went so far as to describe them as acts of “asymmetrical warfare” against the United States.

Now a 58-page study prepared by law faculty and students at Seton Hall University in New Jersey starkly challenges the Pentagon’s claims. It notes serious and unresolved contradictions within a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report — which was publicly released only in fragmentary form, two years after the fact — and declares the military’s internal investigation an obvious cover-up. The only question is: of what?

Law Professor Mark Denbeaux, who directed the study, said in an interview that “there are two possibilities here. Either the investigation is a cover-up of gross dereliction of duty, or it is a cover-up of something far more chilling. More than three years later we do not know what really happened.” (Read a Q&A with Denbeaux: “‘The Most Innocent Explanation Is That This Is Gitmo Meets Lord Of The Flies’”.)

[Huffington Post]