23 at Guantanamo Tried Mass
Suicide in '03
ABC News/AP
Jan 25, 2005
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Jan 25, 2005 — The U.S. military
said 23 Guantanamo Bay terror suspects carried out a coordinated
effort to hang or strangle themselves in 2003 during a week-long
protest in the secretive camp in Cuba.
The military, which had not previously reported the protest,
called the actions "self-injurious behavior" aimed at getting
attention rather than serious suicide attempts.
The coordinated attempts were among 350 "self-harm" incidents
that year, including 120 so-called "hanging gestures," Lt. Col.
Leon Sumpter, a spokesman for the detention mission, said
Monday.
In the Aug. 18-26, 2003, protest, nearly two dozen prisoners
tried to hang or strangle themselves with clothing and other
items in their cells, demonstrating "self-injurious behavior,"
the U.S. Southern Command in Miami said in a statement. Ten
detainees made a mass attempt on Aug. 22 alone.
Last year, there were 110 self-harm incidents, Sumpter
said.
The 23 prisoners were in steel mesh cells and they can talk to
neighbors. It would not have been possible to pass notes, and
they are allowed to exercise only one at a time.
Only two of the 23 were considered suicide attempts requiring
hospitalization and psychiatric treatment. Officials said they
differentiated between a suicide attempt in which a detainee
could have died without intervention, and a "gesture" aimed at
getting attention.
Sixteen of the 23 remain at Guantanamo; seven have been
transferred to other countries.
The military has reported 34 suicide attempts since the camp
opened in January 2002, including one prisoner who went into a
coma and sustained memory loss from brain damage.
The 2003 protests came as the camp suffered a rash of suicide
attempts after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller took command with a
mandate to get more information from prisoners accused of links
to al-Qaida or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, which had
sheltered Osama bin Laden.
Critics linked the two and criticized the delay in reporting
the incidents.
"When you have suicide attempts or so-called self-harm
incidents, it shows the type of impact indefinite detention can
have, but it also points to the extreme measures the Pentagon is
taking to cover up things that have happened in Guantanamo," said
Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for Amnesty International in
Washington, D.C.
"What we've seen is that it wasn't simply a rotation of forces
(guards) but an attempt to toughen up the interrogation
techniques and processes," he added.
Dr. Daryl Matthews, a forensic psychiatrist at the University
of Hawaii, said he believed he was misled during a visit to
Guantanamo in June 2003 to investigate and make recommendations
about detainees' mental health care, at the request of the Army
surgeon general.
"There were many things I wanted to see that I was precluded
from seeing, particularly with the interrogation issues,"
Matthews told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "In
no way did I get honest or accurate information. I feel like I
was being systematically misled."
He criticized some practices, and said it was "appalling" that
medical professionals shared detainees' medical records with
interrogators.
Some 558 prisoners are at Guantanamo Bay, many held for more
than three years without charge or access to attorneys.
The latest report comes against a backdrop of recently
revealed abuse allegations and mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay,
much of which allegedly occurred under Miller.
In a letter obtained by AP, a senior Justice Department
official suggested the Pentagon didn't act on FBI complaints
about four incidents at Guantanamo: a female interrogator
grabbing a detainee's genitals and bending back his thumbs; a
prisoner who was gagged with duct tape; and two incidents
involving the same man a dog being used to intimidate him and
later putting the man in isolation until he showed signs of
"extreme psychological trauma."
In other information about alleged abuses, the American Civil
Liberties Union said Monday that Navy e-mails dated August 2003
the month of the mass protest asked what should be done if a
detainee dies.
"Personally, I suspect that remains should probably NOT be
brought to the U.S. for legal reasons," says the response.
Names were redacted from the messages, among thousands of
documents provided to the ACLU only after a court order on its
Freedom of Information requests.
"The question that needs to be asked is what was the
connection between the events and the interrogation techniques or
circumstances of detention," said Leonard Rubenstein, director of
Physicians for Human Rights in Cambridge, Mass.
Army Gen. Jay Hood, who succeeded Miller last year, has said
the number of incidents has decreased since 2003, when the
military set up a psychiatric ward.
Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, who was a spokeswoman for the detention
mission in August of 2003 said she knew nothing of the mass
protest. She is now a Pentagon spokeswoman for the Army.
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