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 At least seven civilians and military members who worked on detainee
trials at Guantanamo Bay have been diagnosed with cancer, according
to the complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Defense Department’s
Office of the Inspector General. The complaint calls on American
military officials to remove personnel from court facilities on the
base and test them and the base itself for carcinogens.
The complaint claims that an unusually large number of relatively
healthy and young people who worked at the base have been diagnosed
with cancer. Over the past decade, roughly 200 prosecutors, defense
lawyers and other court personnel have worked on the base.
The complaint says that the patients may have been exposed to
carcinogens when they lived and worked in a location at Guantanamo
that was formerly used to dispose of jet fuel, adjacent to an
abandoned runway. The patients may also have been exposed to toxins
such as asbestos in an older building that initially hosted military
trials, according to the complaint.
“The Department of Defense is aware of concerns about possible
carcinogens around the DOD military commission site located at Naval
Station Guantanamo Bay,” said Kelly Wirfel, spokesperson for Naval
Station Guantanamo Bay. “Working together with the Navy Marine Corps
Public Health Center and other environmental and health officials,
Navy Region Southeast is looking into this to identify whatever
steps may be necessary to address these concerns.”
A spokesperson for the Defense Department Inspector General’s office
said the office could not confirm or deny any investigations or
complaints.
"We have been telling our chain-of-command for years that we don't
feel safe living and working in the temporary facilities the
government has erected for military commissions,” said U.S. Air
Force Capt. Michael Schwartz, a military defense lawyer who has
worked on Guantanamo Bay for years. “But, along with the
Constitution, the government seems to want to sweep this under the
rug.”
The complaint doesn’t allege an increase in cancer levels among
detainees, who are imprisoned on a separate part of the
45-square-mile base. There are currently about 115 detainees at the
base, which President Barack Obama has been trying for years to
shut.
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If evidence of health risks does emerge at Guantanamo, it would add
to a litany of problems that has slowed the trials. But the
existence of a cancer cluster, which is what the complaint is
essentially alleging, can be extremely hard to establish.
Two doctors consulted by Reuters said it would be difficult to
determine whether the cancer rate at the base was abnormal without
much more detailed information. They said seven cases would be
unusual among a group of 200 younger people, particularly if all of
them developed the same type of cancer. But seven people in a group
of 200 developing different forms of cancer could be normal,
particularly if the group’s members were older.
The author of the complaint worked on military trials at Guantanamo
Bay for several years and is still employed by the U.S. military,
according to another U.S. military official.
On Monday, Canadian media reported that U.S. Navy Lieutenant
Commander Bill Kuebler, a longtime defense lawyer for Canadian
detainee Omar Khadr, died of cancer on July 17th. Kuebler was 44.
Civilian lawyers who have worked at the base said they supported the
call for an investigation.
“There appears to be a cancer cluster surrounding the military
commissions at Guantanamo,” said J. Wells Dixon, a lawyer with the
Center for Constitutional Rights, who has represented dozens of
Guantanamo detainees. “And the Centers for Disease Control should be
brought in to investigate the matter thoroughly.”
(Edited by Michael Williams)
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