Gitmo Gulag: 3 Suicides ID'd, Bush Blasted by World Leaders

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Gitmo Gulag: 3 Suicides ID'd, Bush Blasted by World Leaders

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

AP via Yahoo - Jun 12, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060612/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guantanamo_suicides

"'A stench of despair hangs over Guantanamo," said Mark Denbeaux, a defense
lawyer who visited a client at Guantanamo on June 2. "Everyone is shutting
down and quitting,'"

Pentagon identifies 3 Guantanamo suicides

By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - One of the Guantanamo detainees who committed
suicide had been cleared for transfer to another country, a second was
involved in a 2001 prison uprising in Afghanistan where a CIA agent died,
and a third had ties to al-Qaida, the Pentagon said Sunday.

The Department of Defense identified the three as Saudi Arabians Mani Shaman
Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi and Yassar Talal Al-Zahrani and Yemeni Ali
Abdullah Ahmed. The two Saudis were also identified earlier by Saudi
officials.

The three hanged themselves with nooses made from sheets and clothing early
Saturday, bringing renewed pressure on the United States to close the prison
on a naval base in Cuba where about 460 men are held, almost all of them
without charge.

Al-Utaybi had been recommended for transfer to the custody of another
country before his suicide, the Defense Department said in a statement
released to The Associated Press. It did not name the country but said he
would have been under detention there as well.

The U.S. military accused al-Utaybi, 30, of being a member of a militant
missionary group, Jama'at Al Tablighi. He was born in Al-Qarara, Saudi
Arabia, according to a Department of Defense list of Guantanamo detainees.

Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the Guantanamo detention center,
said he did not know whether al-Utaybi had been informed about the transfer
recommendation before he killed himself.

U.S. authorities allege Ahmed, 28, was a mid- to high-level al-Qaida
operative who had key ties to principal facilitators and senior members of
the group. Throughout his time in Guantanamo, he had been noncompliant and
hostile to the guard force, and was a long-term hunger striker from late
2005 to May 2006, the Defense Department said.

Ahmed was born in Shebwa, Yemen, according to the Defense Department list.

Al-Zahrani, 21, was accused by the U.S. of being a front line fighter for
the Taliban who facilitated weapons purchases for offensives against U.S.
and coalition forces.

He was allegedly involved in the November 2001 prison uprising in
Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan that resulted in the death of CIA officer Johnny
"Mike" Spann. Al-Zahrani was born in Yenbo, Saudi Arabia, according to the
Defense Department list.

None of the three had been formally charged.

Military medical experts completed autopsies on the men on Sunday afternoon,
Durand said, adding that he did not know when the autopsy report would be
issued.

Navy Lt. Abuhena M. Saiful-Islam, an imam, was brought to the base to ensure
that the bodies were handled according to Islamic rites, and Guantanamo
officials were prepared to perform an Islamic burial at the base if needed,
Durand said.

The Guantanamo detainees, some of them in custody for 4 1/2 years, are being
held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Many claim they are
innocent or were low-level Taliban members who never intended to harm the
United States.

Only 10 detainees have been charged with crimes and face military tribunals
ordered by President Bush.

While U.S. officials argue the suicides were political acts aimed at hurting
American standing in the world, human rights activists and former detainees
say prisoners are desperate after years in captivity and view suicide as the
only way out even though Islam forbids it.

"A stench of despair hangs over Guantanamo," said Mark Denbeaux, a defense
lawyer who visited a client at Guantanamo on June 2. "Everyone is shutting
down and quitting," said the law professor at Seton Hall University in New
Jersey who along with his son, Joshua, represents two Tunisians at
Guantanamo.

He said he was alarmed by the depression he saw in his client, Mohammed
Abdul Rahman, who was "trying to kill himself" by hunger strike.

"He is normally a gentle, quiet, shy person," Denbeaux said late Saturday.
"He sat there in a subdued state that was almost inert. He was colossally
depressed."

Denbeaux said he had intended to cheer Rahman up by showing him a newspaper
article quoting President Bush as saying he wanted to close the jail. But
the lawyer said guards confiscated the article because detainees are barred
from seeing news of current events.

"We wanted to say, 'We have some hope for you,'" Denbeaux said. "They
wouldn't let us give him some hope."

That afternoon, Rahman was force-fed, the lawyer said. Force feeding
involves strapping a hunger striker into a "restraint chair" and feeding him
through a tube inserted into the nose.

In the wake of the suicides, international demands to close the prison
mounted. Two senior U.S. senators also expressed concern that most of the
prisoners have not been charged with any crimes. A Saudi Arabian human
rights group called for an outside investigation of the deaths.

Danish Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen, who supported Bush in the Iraq war,
said the detention center's procedures violate "the very principle of the
rule of law" and weaken the fight against terrorism.

Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson said the deaths underlined the need to
close the camp and bring detainees to trial or free them. Eliasson said the
25-nation European Union believes the facility should be closed.

A hearing scheduled this week for one was suspended after the suicides.
Authorities were considering suspending all this month's hearings pending a
Supreme Court on whether Bush overstepped his authority in setting up the
tribunals.

Gen. John Craddock, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said Saturday
the suicides were part of Islamic militants' holy war against the United
States and its allies.

But a British citizen released from Guantanamo disputed that view.

"Killing yourself is not something that is looked at lightly in Islam, but
if you're told day after day by the Americans that you're never going to go
home or you're put into isolation, these acts are committed simply out of
desperation and loss of hope," said Shafiq Rasul, 29, who waged a hunger
strike while a prisoner in Guantanamo.

"This was not done as an act of martyrdom, warfare or anything else."

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said he would like to see the
detainees' cases judged more quickly.

"Where we have evidence they ought to be tried, and if convicted they ought
to be sentenced," Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said
on CNN's "Late Edition."

He said that without charges, many of the prisoners are "just out there in
limbo, and that creates a very difficult situation."

Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., a member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, backed Bush's comments Friday that the Guantanamo
camp holds some very dangerous terrorists, but said on CNN that more needs
to be done to figure out which detainees aren't a threat.

"There has to be a good procedure that balances the need to keep these
people off the street with the need to find out who in fact is a terrorist,"
he said.

The suicides touched a nerve with Saudis, who are angry that more than 130
of their countrymen are at Guantanamo. Saudi Arabia's semiofficial human
rights organization demanded an independent investigation, questioning
whether torture drove the men to suicide.

"There are no independent monitors at the detention camp so it is easy to
pin the crime on the prisoners, considering it is possible they were
tortured," said Mufleh al-Qahtani, the group's deputy director.

U.S. military guards were trying to prevent more suicides by removing sheets
from cells when detainees are not sleeping. But rights groups and defense
lawyers said they feared the suicides -- the first detainee deaths at
Guantanamo Bay -- were just the beginning.

Until now, Guantanamo officials have said there have been 41 suicide
attempts by 25 detainees and no deaths since the U.S. began taking prisoners
to the base in January 2002. Defense lawyers contend the number of attempts
is higher.

[Associated Press writers Paisley Dodds in London and Abdullah al-Shihri in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.]

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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