Officials confirm suicide attempt at Guantanamo

Despite sweeping measures to prevent suicides among the 305 prisoners here, a detainee slashed his throat with a sharpened fingernail recently and might have bled to death if guards hadn’t rushed to his aid, officers disclosed here Tuesday.

The apparent suicide attempt last month in a shower at maximum-security Camp 6 was one of dozens known to have occurred since prisoners were first brought to the military prison nearly six years ago.

After four suicides by hanging, three last year and one in May, bed linens are collected each morning to keep detainees from making ligatures. Anyone suspected of trying to hurt himself is outfitted in a green quilted “suicide smock” that attaches by Velcro and cannot be shredded.

Three detainees swallowed hoarded medicines in a coordinated suicide attempt in May 2006, prompting medical staff to cut in half the number of pills issued to prisoners each day. The Navy commander who is senior medical officer at the prison clinic said the daily dispensing was down to 500, and that corpsmen ensured that each pill was swallowed.

But little can be done to stop those most determined to hurt themselves, said the senior medical officer, who did not want to be further identified.

A senior officer of the guard force confirmed that the latest incident occurred in a shower and was interrupted by soldiers who patrol the cell blocks every few minutes.

The laceration to the detainee’s throat inflicted by his fingernail caused “an impressive effusion of blood,” said Navy Cmdr. Andrew Haynes, deputy chief of the Joint Detention Group that guards prisoners.

The prisoner, who officials did not identify, was given two stitches in his neck at the detention hospital, then confined to the psychological ward for a week, the medical source said.

Guantanamo officials seldom report or confirm what they refer to as “manipulative self-harm incidents,” but they persist despite preventive measures.

Former Baltimore resident Majid Khan, a “high-value detainee” and alleged affiliate of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, used his teeth to sever a vein in his wrist shortly after he was transferred here last year from a secret CIA prison abroad. That revelation came in documents released after Khan’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal earlier this year.

carol.williams@latimes.com