Guantánamo inmate found dead

A Saudi detainee at Guantánamo Bay was found dead in a suspected suicide, authorities at the US prison camp said on May 31. "The detainee was found unresponsive and not breathing in his cell by guards," the military said in a statement, which described the death as "apparent suicide," but did not identify the prisoner or say exactly how he died. It was left to the Saudi government in Riyadh to identify the man as Abdul Rahman Maadha al-Amry, 34. According to military hearing records, al-Amry was a Saudi army veteran who trained with US forces before fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He had been imprisoned since February 2002 without meeting with a lawyer or being charged with a crime, according to a legal defense group -- a circumstance that the group said could explain his apparent suicide. US Southern Command officials characterized Amri as a mid-level al-Qaida operative who ran safe houses and fought against the United States in November 2001. But al-Amri, appearing at a military hearing in Guantánamo, declared he had no particular animosity toward the United States. "Detainee said had his desire been to fight and kill Americans, he could have done that while he was side by side with them in Saudi Arabia," according to a US military account of Amri's statements to a Combatant Status Review Tribunal of military officers, who concluded he was an enemy and needed to be held indefinitely. "His intent was to go and fight for a cause that he believed in as a Muslim toward jihad, not to go fight against the Americans," the tribunal reported him saying. The military said the man had been held in isolation in the highest security part of the base, Camp 5, which is reserved for the least cooperative or most "high value" inmates. Prisoners in the area are kept in individual, solid-walled cells and are allowed outside for only two hours of recreation in an enclosed area each day. Wells Dixon, a lawyer who met Camp 5 detainees last month said many showed signs of desperation. "I can assure you that it is hell on earth," he said. "You can see the despair on the faces of detainees. It's transparent." "To my knowledge, he had not been visited by an attorney," said Dixon. He said al-Amri's death shows how far detainees have deteriorated mentally. "We have actively tried to see him and the other detainees, and the government has prevented that." If the death is confirmed as suicide it would be the fourth at the base since it opened in January 2002. In June last year, two Saudi detainees and one Yemeni man were found hanged with bed sheets. Critics of the prison said the latest death showed the mental state of many Guantánamo detainees, some of whom have been there for more than five years with no release or trial in sight. "You have five and a half years of desperation there with no legal way out," said Michael Ratner, the head of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. "Sadly, it leads to people being so desperate they take their own lives." Marc Falkoff, part of a team of lawyers representing 17 detainees, said suicides could only be expected. "We've said all along that these guys are going to try to take their lives, and that appears to be what happened here," he said. "It's just incredibly sad, and it wouldn't happen if these guys were just given their day in court." Around 80 of the 380 or so prisoners at the prison are Saudi nationals. A few prisoners are being brought before military tribunals, which have been condemned as deeply flawed and unfair. The tribunals were established by Congress after the US Supreme Court rejected a previous military trial system as unconstitutional. Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve, an organization which represents 37 Guantánamo prisoners, commented: "After more than five years without any charges, the prisoners in Guantánamo are becoming increasingly desperate." The group had warned that more suicides were inevitable, but "they [the US military] remain frozen in a nightmare of their own creation." Guantánamo must be closed immediately, he added. "There is enough blood on everyone's hands."