Guantanamo Bay prisoners 'tried to kill themselves'
Freed Guantanamo Bay prisoners said today they had tried to commit suicide to escape the harsh conditions at the American detention camp.
Several of the 35 Afghans and Pakistanis released from the US naval base in Cuba this year said that while they were physically unharmed they were driven to despair by their confinement in tiny cells and the uncertainty of their fate.
“I was trying to kill myself,” Shah Muhammad, a 20-year-old Pakistani who was captured in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, told the New York Times.
“I tried four times, because I was disgusted with my life. It is against Islam to commit suicide, but it was very difficult to live there. A lot of people did it. They treated me as guilty, but I was innocent.”
A spokesman for the camp said there have been 28 suicide attempts by 18 inmates in the 18 months since it opened. Most of those attempts were made this year.
None of the prisoners have killed themselves, but one inmate, believed to be a former Saudi schoolteacher, suffered severe brain damage after trying to hang himself.
There are about 680 men detained indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, including several Britons.
Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, said many captives feared they would be held forever.
“People were becoming mad because they were saying: ‘When will they release us? They should take us to the high court.’ Many stopped eating.”
He spent 14 months at the camp, initially held in a wire-mesh cell, about six-and-a-half feet by eight feet, which was covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides giving little or no shelter from the sun.
“We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space.”
At first the prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower.
Following a hunger strike they were allowed to exercise for 10 minutes each week by walking around the inside of a 30ft long cage.
After a few months prisoners were moved to newly built cells with running water and a bed.
Amnesty International has called the conditions at Guantanamo Bay a “human rights scandal” and called on the US to release or charge those imprisoned there.
The American military has refused to define the detainees as prisoners of war, even though most were captured on the battlefield, and does not allow them access to lawyers.
No charges have yet been brought against any of the captives.
Pentagon officials have said they are ready to bring military tribunals against some of the prisoners as soon as President George Bush gives the go-ahead.
