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| Is this man mad? |
Erewhon |
06/12/06 |
Guantanamo Bay suicides 'an act of war'
ANDREW SELSKY AND JENNIFER LOVEN
* Suicides bring renewed condemnation of US base in Cuba
* US authorities describe the deaths as 'asymmetric warfare against us'
* Pressure sure to increase to close facility
Key quote
"They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us"
-- Navy Rear-Admiral Harry Harris, base commander
THREE Guantanamo Bay detainees hanged themselves using nooses made of bedsheets and clothes, the commander of the facility confirmed yesterday, describing the suicides as "an act of asymmetric warfare" against the United States.
The suicides, which US military officials said were co-ordinated, have triggered further condemnation of the isolated detention centre in Cuba, which holds some 460 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda and the Taleban. Only ten have been charged with crimes and there has been growing international pressure on the US to close the prison.
Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found dead shortly after midnight on Saturday in separate cells, said the US Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts to revive the men were unsuccessful.
"They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets," Navy Rear-Admiral Harry Harris, the base commander, said. "They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."
Military officials said the men had been held in Guantanamo Bay for about four years. The Saudi authorities identified their dead citizens as Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al Habradi and Yasser Talal Abdullah Yahya al Zahrani. The identity of the Yemeni is not yet known.
All three detainees had engaged in a hunger strike in protest at their indefinite imprisonment and had been force-fed before giving up their protest.
One of the detainees was a mid or high-level al-Qaeda operative, while another had been captured in Afghanistan and participated in a riot at a prison there, Rear-Admiral Harris said. The third belonged to a splinter group.
Detainees have not been allowed to know about classified evidence of allegations against them and thus are unable to respond.
"They're determined, intelligent, committed and they continue to do everything they can to become martyrs in the jihad," said General John Craddock, commander of the Miami-based Southern Command. All three men left suicide notes, Gen Craddock said. He refused to detail the contents of the contents.
Pentagon officials said the three men were in Camp 1, the highest-security area at Guantanamo, and that none of them had tried to commit suicide before. To help prevent more suicides, guards will now give bed sheets to detainees only when they go to bed and remove them after they wake up in the morning, Harris said.
George Bush, the US president expressed "serious concern" over the suicides and directed his administration to reach out diplomatically while it investigates the incident.
Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, has taken a cautious line on Guantanamo Bay, calling it an "anomaly" but not demanding its immediate closure.
Some of his ministers take a harder line, however, with Harriet Harman, the constitutional affairs minister and possible contender for the Labour deputy leadership, yesterday calling for immediate action over the prison.
"If it is perfectly legal and there is nothing going wrong there, why don't they have it in America and then the American court system can supervise it?" she said.
"It is in a legal no-man's land. Either it should be moved to America or it should be closed."
Guantanamo officials have reported 41 unsuccessful suicide attempts by 25 detainees since the US began taking prisoners to the base in January 2002. Defence lawyers contend the number of suicide attempts is higher.
Another embarrassment for Bush
THE three suicides at Guantanamo Bay have achieved a victory in death that they failed to find in life: their actions embarrass the US and seem likely to increase the pressure on Washington to close the facility.
The rights and wrongs of the situation scarcely matter: the US has been tried and found wanting in the court of public opinion. For Washington there is one simple question: are the advantages of Guantanamo Bay now outweighed by the international opprobrium the prison attracts?
It would be out of character for the Bush administration to change its mind because of pressure from the international community, but the camp gives the US's critics a stick with which to beat Washington.
President Bush has said: "We'd like it [Guantanamo] to be empty. Trouble is, there are some that, if put out on the streets, would create grave harm to American citizens and other citizens of the world." (Does it have to be Guantanamo or nowhere? Is Bush that short of imagination?)
And the view among many ordinary Americans is that these three inmates have set an ideal example for the remaining 460 or so prisoners incarcerated on Cuba. Only human rights lobby groups and hand-wringing liberals are much concerned by the fate of prisoners whose living conditions are, in most respects, little worse than those in ordinary American jails.
The difference is that those prisoners have been tried and convicted of specific crimes.
American officials will protest that the suicides are no more than a political protest. (Thery aslready have!) But no matter how grisly it may be, as publicity stunts go, those dead inmates have the whip hand. That this should be the case is perhaps the biggest defeat and embarrassment the US has suffered in the post-9/11 world.
Its stubbornness and indifference to the opinion of the rest of the world have helped foster a situation in which, grotesquely, terrorists have become the sympathetic victims.
That, more than anything else, has been Washington's most disastrous defeat in the war on terrorism. This weekends' deaths at Guantanamo Bay seem likely, alas, to confirm that.
ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON
===
Is the Admiral completely MAD?
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Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 06/12/06 3:40 pm:
Ronnie,
Their method of waging war is to commit suicide in ways that grab headlines and turn public support in their favor. Every piece of intercepted correspondence coroborates this as one of their military goals. They believe that their terrorist actions of suiciding and killing civilians and claiming that it is the USA's fault will accomplish their goal of making the USA look like the bully that the terrorists have no other methods to fight against. This would turn the world against the US government. They also believe that suiciding as a group in Guantanimo will also grab headlines and turn public support in their favor as the media talks about the 'desperation' of the poor terrorists. And Alex Massie's article confirms that it's working. "Its [the US government's] stubbornness and indifference to the opinion of the rest of the world have helped foster a situation in which, grotesquely, terrorists have become the sympathetic victims."
Neither Admiral Harris nor I are falling for it. You obviously are.
Poor babies, my heart bleeds for the unfortunate terrorists, who, if they weren't in Gitmo, would be plotting to kill women and babies on busses and in markets. Not.
Elliot
Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 06/12/06 5:12 pm:
from what I understand they had the cell windows covered up to offer the Gitmo detainees some privacy . I know how we could prevent this in the future . video moniotors in the cells ;no bed sheets ,no clothes ..etc . As I recall the last time the guards tried to prevent a suicide they were attacked by the rest of the detainees in a planned coordinated way . The detainees came damn close to overwhelming the guards during that incident .
Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 06/12/06 7:45 pm:
>>what offences had the suicides been found guilty of?<<
No formal convictions that I'm aware of. They're just nice guys that were probably picked up for no good reason while trying to buy an ice cream sandwich from Popsicle Pete.
Ali Abdullah Ahmed, the Yemeni, was a mid- to high-level al Qaeda operative with links to principal al Qaeda facilitators and senior membership, according to information released by DoD. Throughout his time at Guantanamo Bay, Ahmed was noncompliant and hostile to the guard force, and he was a long-term hunger striker from late 2005 to May 2006. Ahmed had been formally recommended for continued detention in Guantanamo Bay.
Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi al-Utaybi, a Saudi, was a member of Jama'at Tabligh, a militant recruitment group for al Qaeda and other jihadist terrorist groups, according to the DoD release. Jama'at Tabligh has been used by al Qaeda to cover travel throughout the world and has been banned in Saudi Arabia since the 1980s. Utaybi had been recommended for transfer to another country for continued detention in that country.
Yassar Talal al-Zahrani, a Saudi, was an actual front line fighter for the Taliban who had traveled to Afghanistan to take up arms against anti-Taliban forces, according to the release. Zahrani facilitated weapons purchases for Taliban offensives against U.S. and coalition forces. He was captured by Afghan forces and participated in an Afghan prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, that resulted in the November 2001 death of CIA officer Johnny Michael Spann.
Clarification/Follow-up by purplewings on 06/12/06 8:40 pm:
erwhon: All are mad save thee and me!
"And I'm none to sure about thee". LOL Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 06/12/06 9:49 pm:
PW - you will note how carefully I omitted to add that tag!
:)
Clarification/Follow-up by purplewings on 06/12/06 10:43 pm:
I did notice. Why are you being nice to me???? :D
Clarification/Follow-up by powderpuff on 06/12/06 11:10 pm:
Lets blame everything on steroids from now on Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 06/13/06 3:46 am:
I am nice because I am not one of those nasty Coulterite Republicans.
:)
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