Gold Star Family's Triumph

On July 12, 2004 Army Specialist John Torres was found dead in a latrine at Bagram Airfield Afghanistan. His death was ruled a suicide, but members of his unit and family believed he was murdered. Initial information received by the family led them to believe that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan may have killed John for talking openly about heroin use.

“On July 12, 2004 Army Specialist John Torres was found dead in a latrine at Bagram Airfield Afghanistan. His death was ruled a suicide, but members of his unit and family believed he was murdered. Initial information received by the family led them to believe that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan may have killed John for talking openly about heroin use. We would prove John’s claims about heroin use to be true, but the information would not lead to answers in his case. Fifteen months after John’s death the family was sent a copy of the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division report. The report was heavily redacted and missing dozens of pages, and stated John’s death was a suicide resulting from “anxiety and unresolved somatic pain.” But the truth was written in the pages of the document the CID did not send, and in 2007 we obtained nine redaction free pages previously pulled from the report. The nine pages were an evaluation written postmortem by an Army psychiatrist, whose findings would shock and anger the family. The psychiatrist states that John’s “somatic-anxiety symptoms were not sufficiently severe, base on objective findings, to precipitate such an extreme [suicide] response.” He goes on to say that John’s “psychological stressors were likewise mild, especially in contrast to the very promising future that [he] would have begun in earnest in just two months.” But the psychiatrist agrees John fired the weapon that took his life, but it was not suicide, and the cause was not “anxiety and unresolved somatic pain.” The psychiatrist instead points to another factor, a factor the Army has denied for years and claims is not relevant, a factor that suggests the Department of Defense has been misleading military personnel, and the public, for years.”

From the website www.drugsanddeathatbagram.com

This is a documentary about the Torres family and their fight to learn the truth about what happened to their son, John. 

 I met John’s father, Juan, in August of 2005.  He is a kind man who loved his son and did not believe what the military told him.  At this time I have no further information about release dates or where this documentary can be seen.  A Federal Judge has decided that the Torres family can proceed in their case concerning the use of Lariam, which is given to soldiers to prevent malaria.