MIAMI – A U.S. military investigation found Guantanamo troops didn’t follow their own rules, allowing a captive to take a fatal overdose of an anti-psychotic drug days after he was moved into a disciplinary cell from the detention center’s psychiatric ward.

A 79-page report, released Friday under the Freedom of Information Act, showed the “standard operating procedures” governing Army Military Police required soldiers to regularly check on captives kept in solitary cells at Camp 5, Guantanamo’s maximum-security lockup.

Troops didn’t do it for at least two shift changes before Yemeni captive Adnan Latif was discovered dead on the floor of his Camp 5 cell at the Navy base in southeast Cuba on Sept. 8, 2012.

Rather than check on him, Guantanamo troops thought they were letting him sleep for about 15 hours — through a 4 a.m. medication call, the 4:55 a.m. pre-dawn prayer, breakfast, lunch, offers of two hours in a prison recreation yard and the noon call to prayer.

A medic stopped by his cell at 4 a.m. to give him a dose of the drug that ultimately killed him. Because Latif didn’t wake up, the medic left the drug on a shelf within reach of his cell door. It was still there when guards realized he was “unresponsive” 10 hours later.

 


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