Calls to close Guantánamo grow after suicides
Calls to close Guantánamo grow after suicides
Copyright by The Associated Press, The New York Times
Published: June 11, 2006
WASHINGTON The United States is under rising international pressure to close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after three inmates committed suicide over the weekend, the first deaths of detainees to be reported there since the facility opened in early 2002.
Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found dead shortly after midnight Saturday in separate cells, said the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison.
"They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bedsheets," Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the commander at Guantánamo, told reporters in a conference call from the U.S. base in southeastern Cuba.
He and other military officials characterized the suicides as coordinated acts of protests. "They have no regard for human life," Harris said. "Neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."
But human rights activists and defense attorneys said the deaths signaled the desperation of many of the 460 detainees held on suspicion of links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Only 10 of the detainees have been charged with crimes, and there has been growing international pressure on the United States to close the prison.
A United Nations panel, in calling for a shutdown, said last month that holding detainees indefinitely violated the world's ban on torture. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and the Swedish Foreign Ministry are among those who have urged the United States to close the prison.
Saudi Arabia's semiofficial human rights organization called Sunday for an independent investigation into the deaths.
President George W. Bush said Friday that he would like to empty Guantánamo and that he was working to repatriate many of the detainees. After the three suicides were reported Bush expressed "serious concern" about the deaths, said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.
General John Craddock, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said in a conference call Sunday that the three detainees had left suicide notes, but he refused to disclose the contents.
One of the detainees was a mid- or high-level Qaeda operative, Harris said, while another had been captured in Afghanistan and participated in a riot at a prison there. The third belonged to a splinter group. The military did not release the three detainees' names.
But Saudi Arabia identified the two Saudis on Sunday as Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al Habradi and Yasser Talal Abdullah Yahya al Zahrani. The Saudi government has begun procedures to have their bodies sent home, said Mansour Turki, an Interior Ministry spokesman. A list of Guantánamo detainees provided by the Pentagon identified one Saudi Arabian detainee as Talal Yasser al Zharani, 21.
Craddock said that all three had engaged in a hunger strike to protest their indefinite incarceration and had been force-fed before quitting the protest action. Military commanders said two had been participating in the hunger strike as recently as last month, and described one of them as a long-term hunger striker who had begun the protest late last year and ended it in May.
To help prevent more suicides, military officials said that guards would now give bedsheets to detainees only when they go to bed and remove them after they wake in the morning.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has opened an investigation into the deaths, and the State Department has notified the governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, according to a statement by the U.S. Southern Command, the military organization that oversees Guantánamo. A cultural adviser has been assigned to make sure the bodies of the three are handled appropriately, the statement said.
Harris told reporters that the deaths were discovered early Saturday when a guard noticed something out of the ordinary in one of the cells, investigated and found that a prisoner had hanged himself.
He said guards and a medical team rushed in to try to save the inmate's life but were unsuccessful. Then, he said, guards checking on other detainees found that two others in nearby cells had hanged themselves as well.
He said the acts were tied to a "mystical" belief at Guantánamo that three detainees must die at the camp for all the detainees to be released. There have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees since the facility opened, officials said.
Concern about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo has deepened in recent days. Responding to the growing furor over the issue in Europe, Bush said in an interview with German television in May that he would like to close the Guantánamo prison but added that his administration had to first await a Supreme Court ruling on whether the detainees should be tried by civilian courts or military commissions.
Meanwhile, the situation inside the detention center has grown more volatile in recent weeks, with reports that prisoners have engaged in violent attacks on guards, hunger strikes and unsuccessful suicide attempts.
Lawyers for the detainees have predicted for months that some of them would eventually kill themselves. They have complained repeatedly about their access to the detainees and have litigated in the U.S. courts to try to get more information about the prisoners' medical and psychological health.
The lawyers have also strenuously protested the administration's efforts to have all litigation over the treatment of the detainees dismissed under the Detainee Treatment Act, a law signed by Bush on Dec. 30 that would strip the courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees.
Action on nearly all of those petitions has been suspended in recent months, pending a ruling by the Supreme Court this month on the case of a former driver for Osama bin Laden. Among other issues, the court is expected to decide whether the provisions of the Detainee Treatment Act will apply retroactively, as the administration insists that it should, or only to prevent new cases.
While Defense Department officials took new measures to try to break a wave of hunger strikes that began last summer, they also undertook a review of the procedures they would follow in the event of detainees' deaths.
Human rights advocates and attorneys representing detainees at the prison said they believed that the suicides were a result of the deep despair felt by inmates being held indefinitely.
"These men have been told they will be held at Guantánamo forever," said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer at Dorsey & Whitney in New York who represents one detainee who has repeatedly attempted suicide. "They've been told that while they're held there they do not have a single right."
Copyright by The Associated Press, The New York Times
Published: June 11, 2006
WASHINGTON The United States is under rising international pressure to close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after three inmates committed suicide over the weekend, the first deaths of detainees to be reported there since the facility opened in early 2002.
Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found dead shortly after midnight Saturday in separate cells, said the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison.
"They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bedsheets," Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the commander at Guantánamo, told reporters in a conference call from the U.S. base in southeastern Cuba.
He and other military officials characterized the suicides as coordinated acts of protests. "They have no regard for human life," Harris said. "Neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."
But human rights activists and defense attorneys said the deaths signaled the desperation of many of the 460 detainees held on suspicion of links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Only 10 of the detainees have been charged with crimes, and there has been growing international pressure on the United States to close the prison.
A United Nations panel, in calling for a shutdown, said last month that holding detainees indefinitely violated the world's ban on torture. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and the Swedish Foreign Ministry are among those who have urged the United States to close the prison.
Saudi Arabia's semiofficial human rights organization called Sunday for an independent investigation into the deaths.
President George W. Bush said Friday that he would like to empty Guantánamo and that he was working to repatriate many of the detainees. After the three suicides were reported Bush expressed "serious concern" about the deaths, said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.
General John Craddock, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said in a conference call Sunday that the three detainees had left suicide notes, but he refused to disclose the contents.
One of the detainees was a mid- or high-level Qaeda operative, Harris said, while another had been captured in Afghanistan and participated in a riot at a prison there. The third belonged to a splinter group. The military did not release the three detainees' names.
But Saudi Arabia identified the two Saudis on Sunday as Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al Habradi and Yasser Talal Abdullah Yahya al Zahrani. The Saudi government has begun procedures to have their bodies sent home, said Mansour Turki, an Interior Ministry spokesman. A list of Guantánamo detainees provided by the Pentagon identified one Saudi Arabian detainee as Talal Yasser al Zharani, 21.
Craddock said that all three had engaged in a hunger strike to protest their indefinite incarceration and had been force-fed before quitting the protest action. Military commanders said two had been participating in the hunger strike as recently as last month, and described one of them as a long-term hunger striker who had begun the protest late last year and ended it in May.
To help prevent more suicides, military officials said that guards would now give bedsheets to detainees only when they go to bed and remove them after they wake in the morning.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has opened an investigation into the deaths, and the State Department has notified the governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, according to a statement by the U.S. Southern Command, the military organization that oversees Guantánamo. A cultural adviser has been assigned to make sure the bodies of the three are handled appropriately, the statement said.
Harris told reporters that the deaths were discovered early Saturday when a guard noticed something out of the ordinary in one of the cells, investigated and found that a prisoner had hanged himself.
He said guards and a medical team rushed in to try to save the inmate's life but were unsuccessful. Then, he said, guards checking on other detainees found that two others in nearby cells had hanged themselves as well.
He said the acts were tied to a "mystical" belief at Guantánamo that three detainees must die at the camp for all the detainees to be released. There have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees since the facility opened, officials said.
Concern about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo has deepened in recent days. Responding to the growing furor over the issue in Europe, Bush said in an interview with German television in May that he would like to close the Guantánamo prison but added that his administration had to first await a Supreme Court ruling on whether the detainees should be tried by civilian courts or military commissions.
Meanwhile, the situation inside the detention center has grown more volatile in recent weeks, with reports that prisoners have engaged in violent attacks on guards, hunger strikes and unsuccessful suicide attempts.
Lawyers for the detainees have predicted for months that some of them would eventually kill themselves. They have complained repeatedly about their access to the detainees and have litigated in the U.S. courts to try to get more information about the prisoners' medical and psychological health.
The lawyers have also strenuously protested the administration's efforts to have all litigation over the treatment of the detainees dismissed under the Detainee Treatment Act, a law signed by Bush on Dec. 30 that would strip the courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees.
Action on nearly all of those petitions has been suspended in recent months, pending a ruling by the Supreme Court this month on the case of a former driver for Osama bin Laden. Among other issues, the court is expected to decide whether the provisions of the Detainee Treatment Act will apply retroactively, as the administration insists that it should, or only to prevent new cases.
While Defense Department officials took new measures to try to break a wave of hunger strikes that began last summer, they also undertook a review of the procedures they would follow in the event of detainees' deaths.
Human rights advocates and attorneys representing detainees at the prison said they believed that the suicides were a result of the deep despair felt by inmates being held indefinitely.
"These men have been told they will be held at Guantánamo forever," said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer at Dorsey & Whitney in New York who represents one detainee who has repeatedly attempted suicide. "They've been told that while they're held there they do not have a single right."
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