"U.S. military officials say that a Saudi prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has died in an apparent suicide. Three other detainees at Guantanamo have taken their own lives in less than a year. Guards found the Saudi detainee in his cell Wednesday, not breathing and unresponsive.
Just under a year ago, three other Guantanamo prisoners killed themselves. That and a riot shortly afterwards in one of the camps resulted in a more rigid security situation for many of the nearly 400 detainees still held at Guantanamo.
Many privileges were taken away and what were once medium-security areas were tightened into maximum security zones.
Human rights workers and many defense lawyers say those conditions — as well as the detentions — have prompted the prisoners to take desperate measures.
Only a handful of detainees have been charged in the past five years.
On Monday, a military tribunal is due to convene to try two of the prisoners for war crimes."
Link and story here: Saudi Detainee Found Dead in Guantanamo Cell
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10571152
The New York Times ran a story via AP under the headline U.S.: Dead Detainee Was of High Value. The first thing that's striking about the NYTimes headline is that it doesn't say where the detainee died. The NPR headline is simple and to the point: who, where, what. The NYTimes headline is not and, at this point, Guantanamo is so contentious that I can only see that omission of where from a major, US News publication as a gesture intended to move information into the background and away from a more general, public audience. Now lets look at the AP-NYTimes article, with reporting by Andrew O. Selsky and Ben Fox.
"A Saudi Arabian detainee who apparently committed suicide at Guantanamo Bay had been held at the prison camp reserved for the least compliant and most ''high-value'' inmates, a U.S. military spokesman said Thursday.
The Saudi government identified the man who died Wednesday as Abdul Rahman Maadha al-Amry. A spokesman for the kingdom's Interior Ministry, Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, said it was too early to judge how al-Amry died."
Let's pause for a moment. I don't recognize that name from the list of "high value detainees" at Gitmo. The list can be downloaded as a PDF here Detainee Biographies. I imagine that file-link may go down later, so I've downloaded it but also screen captured one page of interest:
That's the only name that comes close to the one in the NYTimes report. More importantly, as the US government is constantly butchering "non-Western" names, it's the only name that comes close in the "high level detainee" section and is Saudi. I'll have to do some more research. I'll try and update later today.
Now, moving on.
"The U.S. military has not confirmed the detainee's identity or explained how it arrived at the conclusion that he probably committed suicide.
'The actual cause of death is under investigation,' Southern Command spokesman Jose Ruiz said by telephone from Miami on Thursday.
Ruiz said the man was held at the maximum-security Camp 5."
Camp 5, Camp Delta, Gitmo, and Guantanamo are all the same place, roughly. Just thought that should be on the record for anyone who was confused, because it's intended to be confusing.
"Prisoners in Camp 5, which is similar to the highest-security U.S. prisons, are kept in individual, solid-wall cells and allowed outside for only two hours a day of recreation in an enclosed area."
If you're interested in knowing what those cells look like, there are links in the previous post.
"Wells Dixon, a defense attorney who met with detainees at Camp 5 last month, said many showed signs of desperation.
''I can assure you that it is hell on earth,'' Dixon said. ''You can see the despair on the faces of detainees. It's transparent.''
Other critics said detainees are frustrated at being held indefinitely without charges.
''You have five and a half years of desperation there with no legal way out,'' said Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents hundreds of Guantanamo detainees. ''Sadly, it leads to people being so desperate they take their own lives.''
Then we get this line a bit further down:
"The death came as Guantanamo prepares to hold pretrial hearings for two detainees in military tribunals."
Pretrial? The "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" are being called pretrials? That word seems to imply that these men-- who have been held for over five years before being granted these "pretrials" by the military-- are going to have actual trials. These review tribunals have been going on for years, are ongoing, and are not pretrials.
"Khadr is still to be arraigned Monday. He and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who also faces a hearing Monday, are among only three of the roughly 380 Guantanamo prisoners to be charged with a crime. The third, David Hicks, was convicted of aiding al-Qaida and returned to his native Australia."
Well, at least they can decide on how to spell David Hicks. Too bad they can't seem to agree on any sort of reasonable pattern that would make it easier to identify any of the "non-Western" detainees. One, last choice excerpt from the NYTimes article:
"The former commander of the detention facilities, Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, described earlier suicides as acts of ''asymmetric warfare'' -- an effort to increase condemnation of the prison."
Asymmetrical warfare? Suicide is a gesture of asymmetrical warfare? Five years with no trial in a high-detention, isolated facility being guarded by the military and suicide is an act of warfare? Are you kidding me? And Iraq and the ongoing violence there. . . ? What, exactly, would that be? Frankly, I don't think we need one suicide to condemn the United States government or its practices right now, I think it's doing an excellent job condemning itself in the eyes of the entire world.
Link to the NYTimes article here: U.S.: Dead Detainee Was of High Value
Please, when you click on the link delight in the fact that the New York Times turned the AP Guantanamo Suicide link into the much more neutral Dead Detainee of High-Value.
After all, it wasn't a suicide in Gitmo-- it was an unfortunate setback to the United States government's data mining of human beings.
Gitmo
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