|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
June 11th, 2006 - 3 Prisoners
Commit Suicide at Guantánamo News article by the New York Times |
|
3 Prisoners Commit Suicide
at Guantánamo By James Risen and Tim Golden New York Times June 11, 2006 Washington, June 10 - Three
detainees being held at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba, committed suicide early on Saturday, the first deaths of detainees to
be reported at the military prison since it opened in early 2002, United
States military officials said. The deaths come at a time of
mounting international criticism of the Bush administration's handling of
terrorism suspects at Guantánamo and other prisons around the world.
President Bush, who was at Camp David on Saturday, expressed "serious
concern" about the deaths, said Tony Snow, the White House spokesman. The three detainees were not
identified, but United States officials said two were from Saudi Arabia and
the third was from Yemen. Military officials said that the three hanged
themselves in their cells with nooses made of sheets and clothing and died
before they could be revived by medical personnel. Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris
Jr., the commander of the detention camp at Guantánamo, told reporters in a
news conference that the deaths were discovered early on Saturday when a
guard noticed something out of the ordinary in a cell and found that a
prisoner had hanged himself. Admiral Harris said guards and a medical team
rushed in to try to save the inmate's life but were unsuccessful. Then,
guards found two other detainees in nearby cells had hanged themselves as
well; all were pronounced dead by a physician. Military officials on
Saturday suggested that the three suicides were a form of a coordinated
protest. "They are smart, they
are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have
no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act
of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." 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 issued on Saturday by the United States Southern
Command, the military organization that oversees Guantánamo. All three men left suicide
notes in Arabic, officials said. One of the detainees was a mid- or
high-level Qaeda operative, another had been captured in Afghanistan and the
third was a member of a splinter group, Admiral Harris said, in an account by
The Associated Press. He said all three had participated in hunger strikes at
the detention center. 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. Lawyers for the detainees,
human rights groups and legal associations have increasingly questioned
whether many of the prisoners can even rightfully be called terrorists. They
note that only 10 of the roughly 465 men held at Guantánamo have been charged
before military tribunals, and that recently released documents indicate that
many have never been accused even in administrative proceedings of belonging
to Al Qaeda or attacking the United States. Advocates for the detainees
said they believed the suicides resulted from the deep despair felt by
inmates who are being held indefinitely. "The total, intractable
unwillingness of the Bush administration to provide any meaningful justice
for these men is what is at the heart of these tragedies," said Bill
Goodman, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the New
York advocacy group that oversees lawyers representing many of the detainees.
"We all had the sense that these men were getting more and more
hopeless. There's been a general sense of desperation that's been
growing." Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a
lawyer at Dorsey & Whitney in New York who represents one detainee who
has repeatedly attempted suicide, said, "These men have been told they
will be held at Guantánamo forever. They've been told that while they're held
there they do not have a single right." Foreign governments and
international organizations have stepped up their criticism of detainee
treatment at Guantánamo. Just last month, a United Nations treaty panel
reviewing the United States' compliance with the international prohibition on
torture argued that Guantánamo should be shut down. Last week, the Council of
Europe issued a separate investigative report that said the United States had
created a "reprehensible network" of dealing with terror suspects,
highlighted by secret prisons believed to be in Eastern Europe and other
nations around the world. Responding to the growing
furor over the issue in Europe, Mr. Bush said in an interview with German
television in May that he would like to close the Guantánamo prison, but that
his administration had to await the outcome of 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 months, with
reports that prisoners have engaged in hunger strikes, suicide attempts and
violent attacks on guards. Lawyers for the detainees
have predicted for months that some would kill themselves. They have
complained repeatedly about their access to the detainees, and have litigated
in federal 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 Mr. 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. In public statements,
Defense Department officials have often dismissed the detainees' suicide
attempts as less than serious and as the actions of trained Qaeda terrorists
to manipulate public opinion. The first hunger strikes by detainees at
Guantánamo began soon after the camp opened in January 2002, and two of those
prisoners were forcibly fed through tubes that year. Dozens of other suicide
attempts followed. Over one eight-day period in
August 2003, 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves, including 10
on a single day. But the Pentagon did not disclose the episode until January
2005, and lawyers for the detainees have complained about what they say has
been a pattern in which the government has withheld information about suicide
attempts or minimized their importance. In late 2003, military
officials at Guantánamo began to re-classify many of the suicide attempts as
"manipulative, self-injurious behavior" that was intended to bring
pressure for better conditions or for release. Officials at Guantánamo
acknowledged that those designations were not necessarily made after any
formal psychological evaluation. But early last summer, as a
new wave of protests broke out, officials at Guantánamo and at the Pentagon
grew increasingly concerned, Defense Department officials said. Doctors overseeing the
treatment of detainees at Guantánamo sought new guidance from the Pentagon
about the circumstances under which they could force-feed hunger strikers by
tubes inserted through their noses and into their stomachs. 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 procedures
they would follow for the possible burial of detainees or the transfer of
their remains in the event that any of them succeeded in committing suicide,
military officials said. Military officials began
trying to discourage the detainees from killing themselves in part by having
military and medical personnel cite passages in the Koran that condemn
suicide. The detainees were systematically told that annual reviews of their
status as "enemy combatants" had been completed, that they would
remain at Guantánamo for at least another year, and that they should
reconcile themselves to the situation, Defense Department officials said. The military's review of the
hunger-strike issue, which included senior Pentagon officials and officers of
the United States Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, eventually led
to a decision to begin strapping those detainees who refused to eat into
metal "restraint chairs" while they were force-fed. After the use of the chairs
was disclosed by The New York Times in February, military officials insisted
that they were acting only to save the lives of hunger-striking detainees who
were precariously close to serious harm or death. Interviews with military
officials indicated that only a handful of the detainees who were then being
force-fed had lost so much weight that they were classified by doctors there
as "severely malnourished." The restraint chair was used on all of
those who refused to eat, military officials said, regardless of their
medical condition. For months after the use of
the restraint chairs became public, lawyers for the detainees and other critics
of United States detention policy predicted that the tougher measures would
push the prisoners to take more radical steps to end their lives. What may have been the most
serious such incident before Saturday's suicides came on May 18, when two
detainees were found unconscious in their cells after ingesting a large
quantity of anti-anxiety medication that various prisoners had apparently
hoarded for the purpose. Another detainee said he had also tried to commit
suicide but did not have enough medication; military officials said they did
not believe his attempt had been serious. Military officials said
other detainees violently attacked guards in subsequent searches of their
cells. A few of the detainees have since told their lawyers that the upheaval
was provoked by guards who mistreated the prisoners' Korans as they tore
through their cells. Another brief hunger strike
began barely two weeks later, the military authorities said, and eventually
involved some 75 detainees. The chief spokesman for the military task force
charged with guarding and interrogating the detainees, Cmdr. Robert Durand of
the Navy, described that episode, like others before it, as an
"attention getting" effort intended to increase public pressure for
their release. Copyright 2006 The New York
Times Company External link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11gitmo.html Three
Detainees Commit Suicide at Guantanamo By Josh White Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 11, 2006; A01 Three
detainees at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
hanged themselves in their cells yesterday morning, the first inmates to die
at the remote island prison since it opened in early 2002, according to
military officials. Guards
found the three men unresponsive and not breathing in their separate cells in
Camp 1 shortly after midnight yesterday, according to Gen. Bantz J. Craddock,
who heads the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, and Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris
Jr., who commands the Guantanamo Bay prison. The detainees had apparently
used their clothing and sheets to fashion makeshift nooses in what military
officials believe was a coordinated suicide pact. All left suicide notes
written in Arabic, the officers said. Military
officials were not releasing the names of the detainees yesterday, but said
two were Saudi Arabian nationals and one was a Yemeni national. Harris described
them as having close ties to terrorist organizations in the Middle East and
said their suicides were "not an act of desperation, but an act of
asymmetric warfare against us." State
Department officials were in discussions with the two nations' governments
yesterday, and the military announced that the Naval Criminal Investigative
Service had opened a routine investigation to determine the causes and
manners of death. The
deaths come amid ongoing criticism from around the world about the military's
highest-profile detention center, where the United States keeps more than 450
detainees who were captured during hostilities in Afghanistan and surrounding
areas and who allegedly are or have been enemy combatants. The United Nations
anti-torture panel called last month for the United States to close the
facility, while human rights groups have railed against the treatment of
detainees there and argue there is no appropriate judicial process in which
they could challenge their detention. The
incident yesterday morning occurred just weeks after two detainees tried to
kill themselves by overdosing on antidepressant drugs they had hoarded in
their cells. Shortly after those suicide attempts on May 18, detainees at the
Guantanamo Bay prison rioted, attacking guards with makeshift weapons. Harris
and Craddock told reporters during an afternoon teleconference that no riot
or uprising accompanied yesterday's suicides. Harris said detainees have been
spreading rumors around the prison's camps that it would take three suicides
to garner international attention. The three men had been involved in hunger
strikes over the past year, and Harris said the Yemeni detainee had been a
long-term hunger striker. All three have been force-fed in the past to break
their strikes, Harris said. Defense
Department officials have long expressed their pride in not having lost a
single life among the approximately 759 detainees who have at one time been
incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. There have been 41 suicide attempts by about
25 individual detainees - many by hanging - but in each previous case,
medical personnel were able to save them. "This
is a determined, intelligent, committed element," Craddock said.
"They continue to do everything they can ... to become martyrs." Christie
Parell, a White House spokeswoman, said President Bush expressed
"serious concern" about the incident. "He stressed it was
important that the bodies be treated humanely and with cultural
sensitivity." William
H. Goodman, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which
represents nearly all the Guantanamo Bay detainees in suits filed in U.S.
courts, said that he and other lawyers are working to learn the identities of
the detainees who died so they can prepare to help their families. Goodman
said the deaths are evidence of a failed system. "These
are the latest victims and the most serious so far in the ongoing effort of
this administration to impose a lawless system that denies justice, fairness
and due process to people throughout the world," Goodman said.
"This is an act of desperation because they have no way to prove their
innocence. A system without justice is a system without hope." Terry
Henry, a Department of Justice lawyer who has been arguing the government's
position in numerous Guantanamo Bay habeas cases, sent an e-mail to defense
lawyers yesterday saying that only one of the three men who committed suicide
has been identified as possibly having an active habeas petition. Craddock
and Harris said none of the detainees had court cases or military commissions
pending. Henry indicated that military commission hearings scheduled for this
week will be postponed, according to his e-mail to lawyers. Defense
lawyers have been arguing for years that the lack of contact between
detainees and their families -- detainees generally are not allowed phone
calls and have infrequent lawyer visits -- has exacerbated the problem of
isolation. David
Remes, a lawyer who represents 17 Yemenis being held at Guantanamo Bay, said
yesterday that the suicides were "a tragedy in the making." "This
is the only way they can leave Guantanamo, if you will," Remes said. In
addition to the suicide attempts, dozens of detainees have launched hunger
strikes over the past few years. Military officials have adopted of a policy
of force-feeding those detainees, but this has spurred allegations of abuse
because a restraint chair is used and because of allegedly painful feeding
methods. The Pentagon this month defended the practice and formalized its
use. Harris said a strike by as many as 80 detainees in May has been reduced
to about eight as of yesterday. There
are about 100 Yemeni detainees and 115 Saudi Arabian detainees held at Guantanamo
Bay, though U.S. officials have been working to return many to the custody of
their home countries to reduce the long-term population. Military
officials have argued that the detainee suicide attempts are designed to gain
attention and to manipulate world opinion. It was unclear if the detainees
were aware of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in
Iraq, but such detainee incidents have previously been tied to major world
events. Harris said he believes the detainees have not learned that Zarqawi
was killed. "Detainees
are held at JTF-Guantanamo because they are dangerous and continue to pose a
threat to the U.S. and our allies," Craddock said. "They have
expressed a commitment to kill Americans and our friends if released. These
are not common criminals, they are enemy combatants being detained because
they have waged war against our nation and they continue to pose a
threat." Staff
writer Michael Abramowitz and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this
report. ©
2006 The Washington Post Company External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/10/AR2006061000507.html |