Posted on 05/30/2007 8:29:17 PM PDT by Omega Man II
Guantanamo Saudi 'kills himself'
Reuters | Thursday, 31 May 2007
A Saudi Arabian prisoner has died of an apparent suicide at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the US military said.
"The detainee was found unresponsive and not breathing in his cell by guards. The detainee was pronounced dead by a physician after all lifesaving measures had been exhausted," the US Southern Command in Miami said in a statement.
The military did not indicate how the prisoner died nor release his name.
He is the fourth detainee to die of apparent suicide at the detention camp, which opened in January 2002 and holds about 380 foreign terrorist suspects on the US naval base in southeastern Cuba.
Three other prisoners two Saudis and a Yemeni hanged themselves with clothing and bedding in their cells last June and their deaths are still under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
"The remains of the deceased detainee are being treated with the utmost respect. A cultural advisor is assisting the Joint Task Force to ensure that the remains are handled in a culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner," the Southern Command said.
It said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service had begun an investigation.
In Washington, Amnesty International advocacy director Jumana Musa said news of another suicide at the detention camp was not surprising.
"When you look at the conditions that people are in, so many people are in isolation so many people held without any kind of certainty. It's a really extreme result of what's a really extreme situation," she said.
"I don't know how many more indications need to be there that Guantanamo is not a good idea."
The latest death comes eight days after a new commander took over the military task force that runs the controversial detention centre. Rear Adm. Mark Buzby took command of the prison camp last week, replacing Rear Adm. Harry Harris, who was new to the job when the previous suicides took place.
The United States has faced persistent criticism over its indefinite detention at Guantanamo of men it considers "unlawful enemy combatants" not entitled to the protections granted prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
It opened the prison camp shortly after the September 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people in 2001, and says the prison is needed to prevent dangerous al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from returning to the battlefield, and to extract information that could help prevent future attacks.
Human rights activists, who have urged Washington to close the prison, denounced the earlier deaths as a sign of desperation while the US military said they were acts of "asymmetrical warfare."
"In the last year, the conditions at Guantanamo have become even more bleak: the military has increasingly held people in solitary confinement and continued to refuse to allow independent psychological evaluations. The United States government is responsible for this man's death and must be held accountable," Wells Dixon, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said in a statement.
A military tribunal was scheduled to convene on Monday at Guantanamo to arraign two prisoners on war crimes. The earlier suicides also occurred days before a war crimes tribunal was to convene and forced a postponement of those hearings.
The man who died was not one of those charged in the tribunals, an official said.
The two captives scheduled for arraignment on Monday are Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of murdering a US soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was Osama bin Laden's driver in Afghanistan and who won a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in June last year.
In that decision, the Supreme Court struck down as illegal the initial tribunal system created by President George W. Bush to try terrorism suspects at Guantanamo. Congress authorized a new military tribunal system last year but defence lawyers said it was as flawed as the old one.
Khadr, who was allowed for the first time last week to see a Canadian lawyer, fired his US military and civilian lawyers on Wednesday.
"He is very distrustful of American lawyers, I think with good reason, because the system is unfair," said the dismissed military lawyer, Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey.
Yawn
Okay: I know this stuff is supposed to be serious what with all them Arabs acting up all the time & whatnot and I am trying to be serious but the BIG PIG stuff just cracks me up: I had shown the BIG PIG pix to my daughter The Boo before and she said it was just a land version of a MISSISSIPPI MUDSUCKER.
Y’all know MISSISSIPPI MUDSUCKERS:
http://www.xybernut.com/images/worldrecordcatfish.jpg
Evil has consequences. He personally made sure he got his early. End of story.
Hope they were experimenting on a new torture technique when he OD’ed.
“....Guantonamo is not a good idea.”
Terrorism is a really BAD idea.
These Amnesty types act like the inmates are being held for NO reason.
vaudine
That headline is absolutely disgusting, I had to click the link to make sure it was posted as Reuters published it. There is no question why they used the quotation marks like they did. Self censored comment here.
Because posts like these are reassuring that the WOT is going well.
Colby was a year behind me at A&M.. Sad, I thought I taught him better than that. The Marine Corps must have changed him... :0(
dam good point
No doubt this $#!+bird’s DEMONrat supporters will be filing suit over this by lunchtime tomorrow.
YOU should not be disgusted. Because thats exactly the feeling the media is trying to evoke in its intended audience, even though you are disgusted for a different reason.
In fact I hope what Reuters is trying to suggest is true. One, it shows that the US military doesn't give a sh** about what they report in the media and will continue with their ways, and two, it encourages Gitmo Guests to cooperate.
========sniff===========
I’ll bet one of the guards hit him over the head with a Koran.
Lots of room in hell - hope he enjoys eternity being tortured by Muhammosatan (poop be upon him). Suicide = extra crispy recipe.
I’d say we need to provide them all with belts to wear.
Reuters is trying to "suggest" that the prisoners were murdered by our military. If that is what YOU hope is TRUE, the yes, I am disgusted, by YOU!
Next....
Reuters is suggesting the death was 'not voluntary', not necessarily cold blooded murder. If that is in fact the case, I am sure there was a good reason behind it. If he succumbed to torture (meaning he was not cooperating), its fine by me. If it was an accident, thats also fine by me. And if he was a threat or attacked somebody and then died in a confrontation, thats fine with me too. Whatever the facts of the case, I am not shedding any tears. In fact I think will go and open a bottle of wine. I had been meaning to try some for the past few days.
Absolutely. Those clowns at Reuters never "quotation marked" statements of fact from the Clinton Administration.
I believe so.
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