Details on Detainee Suicides Emerging

With the U.S. detention camp for terrorism suspects under renewed scrutiny, a top U.S. general arrived here Sunday to review the investigation into the first three deaths at the 4 1/2 -year-old facility.

Military officials identified the men who they said hanged themselves Saturday, describing them as a liaison to top Al Qaeda officials, a “front-line” Taliban fighter and a second-tier militant cleared for transfer back to his country.

All three -- two Saudis, 21 and 30, and a Yemeni, who was 28 or 29 -- were hostile toward camp guards, defied camp rules and took part in protracted hunger strikes, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, the spokesman for the prison. They also refused to accept legal representation, according to prison authorities, or to attend the occasional military reviews that considered whether they should be classified as too dangerous to be set free.

Guantanamo officials declined Sunday to discuss how the suicides, which came after weeks of heightened unrest and protest at the camp, had influenced operations.

Meanwhile, the international clamor against the prison continued, with one U.S. senator saying it should be closed as soon as possible.

“The detainees’ death reveals the mistreatment at Guantanamo and the extent human rights are breached,” Katib al Shimary, a lawyer for Saudi detainees, told the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite television network. “Their suicide -- that is, if they did commit suicide -- is a response to the oppression and injustice they lived in.”

The Saudi Interior Ministry said it would ask for the bodies of its citizens to be returned, and a spokesman told Reuters news service that the U.S. ally would step up efforts to repatriate the 103 Saudi detainees still at the facility. “Each Saudi has to be brought home where he can face up to charges he is accused of based on our laws and regulations,” the spokesman told the news service.

The three men had not been officially charged with any crimes.

The Yemeni who died, Ali Abdullah Ahmed, had “key links to principal Al Qaeda facilitators and senior membership,” Durand said, including to Abu Zubaydah, who was a top lieutenant of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden until his capture in Pakistan in 2002.

The 21-year-old Saudi, Yassar Talal al Zahrani, who probably arrived at Guantanamo as a juvenile, was described as a front-line fighter for the Taliban. Durand said he secured weapons for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and took part in the Mazar-i-Sharif prison uprising in which CIA officer Johnny “Mike” Spann became the first American casualty.

Mani Shaman Turki al Habardi al Utaybi, 30, belonged to a “second-tier militant group,” Jama’at Tabligh, which recruited for Al Qaeda and other jihadist factions, Durand said.

Al Utaybi had been cleared for a transfer to detention in Saudi Arabia.

The suicides, the first deaths at the detention center here since at least 759 prisoners began arriving in January 2002, prompted the head of the U.S. Southern Command, responsible for military operations from Florida to the South Pole, to fly to the scene to check on the investigations.

Army Gen. John Craddock toured Camp 1, where the deaths occurred, as well as the hospital where the men were taken to try to revive them.

All three men, found dead early Saturday, were hanging from strips of cloth torn from their bedding or cotton prison garb.

They were held in metal mesh cells in the sprawling compound, which is surrounded by razor-wire-topped fences and bathed in tropical heat.

The suicides followed a recent prisonwide hunger strike involving nearly 90 of the approximately 460 detainees, as well as a May 18 uprising against military guards in which six prisoners were injured. Military officials have said there have been hundreds of suicide attempts at Guantanamo.

The deaths prompted the Pentagon to suspend “until further notice” the military tribunals for the 10 terrorism suspects charged with crimes.

The military courts have been the subject of as much international condemnation as the prison, which jails “enemy combatants” without charges or legal recourse and denies them the protections of the Geneva Convention. A forum for trying war crimes that had not been used since World War II, the tribunals are under the scrutiny of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on their legitimacy by the end of the month.

Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of the prison, has said the detention facility will remain in operation whatever the high court rules, as long as there is a need to prevent captives deemed to be hardened holy warriors from engaging U.S. forces on the battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan.

U.S. officials continued Sunday to depict the dead men as choosing to commit suicide as a tactic in their jihad.

In an interview with the BBC, Colleen P. Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of State for public diplomacy, said the men had other ways available to them, including access to lawyers, to protest their detention.

“Taking their own lives was not necessary,” she said, “but ... this certainly is a good PR move to draw attention.”

Two senators who appeared on CNN’s “Late Edition” urged swift action.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said the facility should be closed “as quickly as possible,” noting that “as long as Guantanamo exists, it’s a source of international attention and concern.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said detainees were “just out there in limbo, and that creates a very difficult situation.” He concluded, “Where we have evidence, they ought to be tried, and if convicted, they ought to be sentenced.”

It was unclear when the official causes of death would be released. Neither Craddock’s Southcom staff nor Harris’ prison medical officials would say how long the autopsy process would take or where the bodies would be buried.

An imam from the U.S. military chaplain service arrived at Guantanamo to perform the rituals traditional in the Islamic faith. There has been no Islamic spiritual advisor at the prison for more than two years.

Washing, shrouding and praying over the bodies will be done after a pathologist completes the autopsies, said the imam, Navy Lt. Abuhena M. Saifulislam. Though it is traditional for Muslims to be buried within 24 hours of their death, Saifulislam observed that “necessity dictates exceptions.”

Saifulislam was assigned to Guantanamo in the first weeks after the U.S. military began bringing captives from Afghanistan and served for 99 days as chaplain to the new arrivals.

Although there has been speculation that any deaths at Guantanamo might lead to their burial here, as the transfer of remains to a home country could result in further forensic inspection and potential accusations against the U.S. military, a source here said it was likely the bodies would be leaving the island once the U.S. State Department negotiated the terms of their transfer.

After Craddock inspected the Camp 1 death scenes in the company of Harris and other U.S. military officials, the general said authorities were “looking at procedures to preclude recurrence of what we know to have been hangings.”

Craddock said the suicides showed the difficulty prison administrators had balancing access to “comfort items,” such as bedding and clothing, with the aim of preventing their use in suicides.

He said prison officials could draw no conclusions until investigations, including one by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, were completed. He declined to speculate about why detainees had recently increased acts of rebellion against their confinement.

Later, though, he observed that the recent unrest might have been “an attempt to influence the judicial proceedings” here and in U.S. federal courts.

Accompanying Craddock on his tour of the prison and hospital facilities was William Winkenwerder, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs. He said none of the three dead men were known to have suffered from psychological disorders or were taking any prescription medications.

All three had taken part in hunger strikes over the last year, and the Yemeni had refused food since August and endured force-feeding until recently, Harris told reporters in announcing the deaths.

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Steve Xenakis, a department head at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington, said that by participating in hunger strikes, the detainees had signaled feelings of hopelessness and fatalism.

“From what I understand about the climate there,” he said, “I just felt it would be only a matter of time” before suicides occurred.

Xenakis said the policy for handling detainees who refused food for more than three days could inspire despondent detainees to take their lives rather than endure the pain of force-feeding. Prisoners who refuse food are restrained in chairs and feeding tubes are inserted in their nasal passages.

Elisa Massimino, Washington director of the advocacy group Human Rights First, was sharply critical of the U.S. facility at Guantanamo.

“Beyond the individual tragedies, these deaths are the latest symptom of a chaotic U.S. detention system, which has proven a policy, legal and ethical failure across the board,” she said. “Holding people indefinitely, without access to family, regular legal process or independent medical care is an invitation to disaster.”

Lawyer Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, who represents three Bahraini detainees -- including 32-year-old Juma al Dossari, who has tried to kill himself at least a dozen times -- said despair consumed the prisoners.

“These people have been detained four-plus years without trials, without charges. They’re being told they will remain at Guantanamo forever, that they’ll never see their families again, that they have no rights as human beings,” the attorney said. “One client told me if he had to choose between living at Guantanamo for the rest of his life or taking his own life, that he would kill himself.”

Three Bahrainis earlier represented by Colangelo-Bryan have been released to Bahrain, and one e-mailed the lawyer Sunday to say he was saddened by the suicides but not surprised.