Families sue over Guantanamo deaths

The families of two prisoners who died at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are asking a federal court to reconsider its ruling dismissing their lawsuit, which seeks to hold federal officials and the U.S. government accountable for their sons' torture, arbitrary detention, and ultimate deaths. According to their lawyers, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the families' request is based on newly discovered evidence from four soldiers who describe a cover-up by the authorities and say they were ordered not to speak out. The soldiers' accounts were reported in Harper's Magazine in January. The Pentagon maintains that the two men, along with a third prisoner, committed suicide in their cells in 2006. But their lawyers say the soldiers' firsthand accounts "raise serious questions about the actual cause and circumstances of the deaths." They charge that "their accounts strongly suggest that the men died as the result of torture at a 'black site' - a secret prison - within Guantánamo. In a statement directed to President Obama and U.S. judicial authorities, Talal Al-Zahrani, father of one of the men who died that night, said, "Mr. President, the killing of my son in the hands of his guards and under the supervision of the administration of the detention center is a serious and gruesome crime."