In 2009 a report by Seton Hall University Law School criticized the DOD NCIS investigative account of the deaths as full of inconsistencies and errors.

In a joint investigation by Harper's Magazine and NBC News, a January 2010 article by Scott Horton asserted that Bumgarner and other senior military personnel at Guantanamo and in the Department of Defense participated in a cover-up of homicides of the three detainees, resulting from severe interrogations at a black site outside the main camp.

[citation needed] Michael Bumgarner is the son of a career army sergeant major and his wife, in a family that valued military service.

"[3] In Rasul v. Bush (2004), the United States Supreme Court had ruled that detainees had the right to habeas corpus, and could challenge their detentions.

[3] In the summer, detainees started a widespread hunger strike, protesting conditions at the camp and, especially, demanding "fair trials or freedom.

[5] Detainees have said that Colonel Bumgarner made promises of improvements in treatment and conditions that the camp administration later failed to fulfill.

In 2009, Seton Hall University Law School published a report, Death in Camp Delta, that was highly critical of the NCIS investigation and noted many inconsistencies in the DOD account.

This was one of numerous reports which had been published by the Law School's Center for Policy and Research, which analyzed issues related to Guantanamo and the detainees.

The report suggested that the camp had been grossly negligent, or that officers had made a cover-up of accidental death, perhaps resulting from torture during interrogation.

[7] In January 2010, Scott Horton, a journalist and human rights attorney, published an article in Harper's Magazine asserting that the three detainees did not hang themselves as claimed by DOD in June 2006, but died under harsh interrogations at "Camp No".