Another Suicide Reported at Guantanamo

A detainee accused of being an al-Qaida operative committed suicide in a Guantanamo Bay prison yard, U.S. officials say. His death brings the total number of Guantanamo “suicides” to six since the U.S. began sending foreign captives there in 2002.

It is difficult to trust the official report without an independent investigation into the man’s death. In 2006, U.S. authorities claimed that three Guantanamo detainees committed suicide simultaneously by hanging themselves with bedsheets and T-shirts after gagging their own throats with cloth. But as Scott Horton at Harper’s Magazine showed, the official story is full of holes. Evidence obtained in interviews with a military guard suggests that the prisoners died while being tortured and that the U.S. government covered up the homicides. —ARK

Guardian:

The prisoner was found dead in a recreation yard by guards conducting routine checks at the facility. He was identified as Inayatullah, a 37-year-old accused of being a member of al-Qaida

... The US military’s southern command said on Wednesday that guards found the detainee unresponsive and not breathing. “After extensive lifesaving measures had been exhausted, the detainee was pronounced dead by a physician.”

Inayatullah is the eighth prisoner to die at Guantanamo Bay since the US began sending foreign captives with suspected al-Qaida or Taliban links there in January 2002. Five others have are believed to have killed themselves and two died of natural causes.

Read more

Flickr / JTF Guantanamo

A guard patrols a prison yard at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.