04-309: Death from Torture

04-309: Death from Torture
By emptywheel | firedoglake

Meet "04-309." I don't know his name--DOD redacted that from the reports on detainee deaths it released to ACLU some time ago. "04-309" is the number DOD assigned to the autopsy they did on him in Mosul on April 26, 2004, just two days before the Abu Ghraib story broke.

When 04-309 was captured by Navy Seals around April 2, 2004, he was around 27, a "well-developed, well-nourished" man, 6 foot and 190 pounds. He had no visible scars. He was, apparently, healthy.

04-309 did, however, show signs of minor injury: cuts and bruises around his head and belly and right shoulder and arm. These wounds may have come when he was arrested--his autopsy summary says "Q by NSWT [Navy Seals], struggled/interrogated" before it describes he, "died sleeping."

But 04-309's Final Autopsy Report--completed on November 22, 2004, long after Abu Ghraib broke and the CIA's Inspector General concluded the CIA's interrogation program was cruel and inhumane (though not all that long after a criminal investigation of homicides committed in 2002 concluded, on October 8, 2004, that the deaths were partly caused by sleep deprivation and stress positions)--doesn't conclude how he died. It does, however, describe these "circumstances of death:" Read more.