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?