Death
The findings of Mr. Dilawar's autopsy were succinct.
Leaked internal United States Army documentation, a death certificate dated 12 December 2002, ruled that his death was due to a direct result of assaults and attacks he sustained at the hands of interrogators of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion during his stay at Bagram. The document was signed by Lt. Col. Elizabeth A. Rouse of the U.S. Air Force, a pathologist with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington DC, and listed as its finding that the "mode of death" was "homicide," and not "natural," "accident" and "suicide" and that the cause of death was "blunt-force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease".
A subsequent autopsy revealed that his legs had been "pulpified," and that even if Dilawar had survived, it would have been necessary to amputate his legs.
According to the death certificate shown in the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, the box marked Homicide had been checked as the ultimate cause of death. however, the military had so far publicly claimed that Dilawar had died from natural causes. It was only by accident that the death certificate was leaked, when New York Times reporter named Carlotta Gall managed to track down Dilawar's family in Yakubi, where Dilawar's brother, Shahpoor, showed her a folded paper, he had received with Dilawar's body. He could not read because it was in English. It was the death certificate.
Read more about this topic: Dilawar (torture Victim)
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Accordingly, death is a harbor of peace for the just, but is believed a shipwreck for the wicked.”
—Ambrose (c. 333–397)
“‘Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado on lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alligator dies in his mail, and the swordfish never surrenders. To expire, mild-eyed, in one’s bed, transcends the death of Epaminondas.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)