Detainee dies in apparent suicide
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – A Saudi Arabian detainee died Wednesday at Guantanamo Bay prison, and the U.S. military said he apparently committed suicide. Critics of the detention center said the death showed the level of desperation among prisoners.
The military did not identify the detainee who died or describe the manner of death. There are about 80 detainees from Saudi Arabia held at Guantanamo.
Guards at the U.S. Naval Base in southeast Cuba found the detainee unresponsive and not breathing in his cell Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. military’s Southern Command said in a statement.
“They tried to save his life, but he was pronounced dead,” said Mario Alvarez, a Miami-based spokesman for the command.
Lawyer Julia Tarver Mason, whose firm represents eight Saudi detainees at Guantanamo, said she has tried so far without success to learn from the government if the apparent suicide was by one of her clients.
“They are in the care of the United States government and that should mean that deaths should not occur,” Mason said.
A spokesman for detention operations, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, declined to comment, referring questions to the Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Defense attorneys said the death was likely an act of desperation at a prison camp where detainees are denied access to U.S. civilian courts and isolated in their cells for up to 22 hours a day.
“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. “Sadly, it leads to people being so desperate they take their own lives.”
Marc Falkoff, who is part of a team of attorneys representing 17 men from Yemen, said the suicide should be expected.
“We’ve said all along that the guys are going to try to take their lives, and that appears to be what happened here,” Falkoff said.
The apparent suicide Wednesday came despite the military’s best efforts.
The military tightened security at the prison camp following the previous suicides and an uprising last spring, removing access to light fixtures and other possible makeshift weapons and taking away bed sheets in the daytime.
About 380 men are held at the isolated prison camp on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Many have been held five years.