Charlie Savage confirms what Jason Leopold had suggested earlier: Adnan Latif died from too much psychiatric drugs.

A Yemeni detainee who was found dead in September at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, died from an overdose of psychiatric medication, according to several people briefed on a Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry.

But while a military medical examiner labeled the man’s death a suicide, how the prisoner obtained excess drugs remains under investigation, according to American and Yemeni officials.

Savage’s sources suggest that Latif was stockpiling the drugs himself, perhaps in a bodily orifice.

One official, however, discounted [David Remes'] theories, saying investigators were working from the premise that Mr. Latif pretended to swallow his drugs for a period and hid the growing stash on his body. Prison monitoring policies — including how closely guards inspect detainees’ mouths after giving any medication and search their private areas — are now facing review.

Though of course, that would have required Latif to have brought them with him from the hospital ward to the solitary confinement ward, which would mean he managed to get the drugs by both the administration period but also the admission into solitary.

Savage also doesn’t mention a few details from Leopold’s earlier article. Shaker Aamer told David Remes that Latif had been told he’d be injected with a drug detainees say turns them into zombies for a month.

Aamer contends Latif was told on September 6, two days before his death, he would be given an “ESP injection,” that other prisoners claim “makes you a zombie” and “has a one-month afterlife,” according to unclassified notes of the meeting between Remes and Aamer.

More interesting still–given the points I raised above about how Latif would have managed to get drugs into solitary with him–is this detail.

Another prisoner said a female psychologist accompanied Latif from the hospital to Camp 5, where one prisoner told Remes the minimum stay is three months, “regardless of the magnitude of the offense.”

The female psychologist said she would communicate Latif’s concerns about being housed in Camp 5 to “higher-ups.”

Mind you, this psychologist at least sounds sympathetic. Moreover, this detail would seem to be unknowable to other detainees–how would they know what she had told Latif?–unless the psychologist had spoken to other detainees.

Finally, there’s this: Savage’s sources (as were some of Leopold’s) are citing the NCIS investigation, not the autopsy. But that’s not supposed to be done for nine months. Now perhaps NCIS doesn’t expect to have an explanation for how Latif got or stashed the drugs for another 7 months at least. Or perhaps the NCIS investigation will take that long only to make sure Latif’s remains will be good and decomposed by the time it’s done.

But as we discuss the minutia of how a detainee managed to overdose in closely guarded solitary, remember this: He was almost certainly innocent, and he surely should not have remained in Gitmo after habeas review.  Because of that legal injustice, we’re left playing clue about how a disturbed man died in America’s prison camp.

On October 4, I asked with disgust whether the government planned to hold Adnan Latif’s body until after the election.

Latif died on September 8–26 days ago, or 44% the period until the election. if the sole explanation for the delay is that the US is unwilling to turn over an explanation of how Latif died, it makes it far more likely that Latif died of something other than suicide.

So are they going to hold Latif on ice until the election? Is that the idea?

On October 18, when Jason Leopold explained the delay in revealing the cause of Latif’s death, I suggested any delay in repatriating Latif’s would prevent an independent assessment of why he died.

Meanwhile, no one can perform independent analysis on Latif’s body, because the government has stashed it at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The US and Yemeni governments continue the same story shared with ProPublica: the Yemenis won’t accept the body until they get a report on why he died, the US hasn’t provided that, so the body decays in US custody.

[snip]

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

Latif died 40 days ago. Just 19 days remain before the election. Between them, the US and Yemeni governments have forestalled the time when the US has to admit a man–the sole evidence against whom was a flawed intelligence report written while Pakistanis were trying to convince us to pay a bounty for Latif–died of unnatural causes in their custody.

And when, 3 days after Obama’s reelection and 62 days after Latif’s death the government finished (but did not release) the autopsy results, I repeated my suspicion that the delay was designed to obscure the real cause of death.

This is all so predictable it really raises questions about what kind of unnatural causes killed Latif.

What caused a death at Gitmo that was scandalous enough it had to be buried until after the election?

With utterly predictable timing, Leopold reports the government has told Yemen–but not the American people, officially–how Latif died.

Suicide, they say, in seeming contradiction to early reports that said there were no signs of self-harm.

But here is the even more predictable kicker. No one can check their claims, because Latif’s body has been decomposing during the entire 79 day delay since he died.

Latif’s body has been held for nearly three months at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. US officials have said Latif’s remains have been handled according to Muslim precepts, which precluded taking steps to preserve his body and organs, now badly decomposed. Therefore, his family will not be able to seek an independent autopsy.

“This will be very tough for [Latif's] family,” the Yemeni government official said about the condition of Latif’s remains. [my emphasis]

To prevent any accounting for the death of a probably innocent man imprisoned for over 10 years, the most advanced government on earth has just let that man’s body rot.

And rot.

And rot.

For over one fifth of a year.

Until no one could prove or disprove that the US government’s own treatment (or prior head wounds the government insisted, in an effort to continue to detain him in spite of a dearth of real evidence against him, were never that serious) killed this man.

Rotten. Rotten. Rotten.

Thirty-five days ago, I predicted the government would hold Adnan Latif’s body on ice until after the election.

So are they going to hold Latif on ice until the election? Is that the idea?

Not long after, Jason Leopold revealed they did, indeed, have Latif on ice–at Ramstein Air Base–purportedly because the Yemeni government refused to accept the rotting corpse until they also got an autopsy report. I noted,

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

Latif died 40 days ago. Just 19 days remain before the election. Between them, the US and Yemeni governments have forestalled the time when the US has to admit a man–the sole evidence against whom was a flawed intelligence report written while Pakistanis were trying to convince us to pay a bounty for Latif–died of unnatural causes in their custody.

Surprise surprise! Leopold reports today that the government has now finished the autopsy and may turn it over to Yemen today (after which presumably they will finally accept Latif’s body, too).

The US government plans to turn over a long-awaited and recently-completed autopsy report to Yemeni Embassy officials in Washington, DC as early as today, but no one will say when or if the results will be made public.

An official at the Yemen Embassy, who declined to be named, said the embassy will not comment on the autopsy report’s conclusions or whether it determined how Latif died. Instead, the report will immediately be forwarded to government officials in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. Someone there will decide “what the next step” will be, the embassy official said.

Not surprisingly, the delay pisses off Latif’s family.

Latif’s brother, Muhammed, said his family is distraught because they have been unable to properly mourn his older sibling and they are desperate to learn about the details of his death.

He questioned whether the delay was due to the presidential election.

“When will America apply the principles it claims to uphold?” Muhammed asked. “When will the American people demand the US government uphold the law? America is playing politics with a dead person. America doesn’t care about our rights, my brother’s rights or human rights. Yet, America claims they are favoring human rights all over the world. It’s hypocrisy.”

This is all so predictable it really raises questions about what kind of unnatural causes killed Latif.

What caused a death at Gitmo that was scandalous enough it had to be buried until after the election?