 One of the Guantanamo detainees who committed suicide had been cleared for transfer to another country, a second was involved in a 2001 prison uprising in Afghanistan where a CIA agent Mike Spann died, and a third had ties to al-Qaida, the Pentagon said Sunday.
The Department of Defense identified the three as Saudi Arabians Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi and Yassar Talal Al-Zahrani and Yemeni Ali Abdullah Ahmed. The two Saudis were also identified earlier by Saudi officials. Al-Utaybi had been recommended for transfer to the custody of another country before his suicide, the Defense Department said in a statement released to The Associated Press. It did not name the country but said he would have been under detention there as well. The U.S. military accused al-Utaybi, 30, of being a member of a militant missionary group, Jama'at Al Tablighi. He was born in Al-Qarara, Saudi Arabia, according to a Department of Defense list of Guantanamo detainees. Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the Guantanamo detention center, said he did not know whether al-Utaybi had been informed about the transfer recommendation before he killed himself. | Otaibi is one of those Soddy clans whose members keep showing up in inconvenient places, usually hollering jihad and waving bloody swords. I doubt the princelings would miss any of them all that much. |
U.S. authorities allege Ahmed, 28, was a mid- to high-level al-Qaida operative who had key ties to principal facilitators and senior members of the group. Throughout his time in Guantanamo, he had been noncompliant and hostile to the guard force, and was a long-term hunger striker from late 2005 to May 2006, the Defense Department said. Ahmed was born in Shebwa, Yemen, according to the Defense Department list.
Al-Zahrani, 21, was accused by the U.S. of being a front line fighter for the Taliban who facilitated weapons purchases for offensives against U.S. and coalition forces. He was allegedly involved in the November 2001 prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan that resulted in the capture of Johnny Walker Lindh and also the death of CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann. Al-Zahrani was born in Yenbo, Saudi Arabia, according to the Defense Department list.
 None of the three had been formally charged.| Yeah yeah, Geneva Convention, human rights, Bush Bad, yadda, yadda, yadda. And now for the full Fifth Column Treatment: |
The Guantanamo detainees, some of them in custody for 4 1/2 years, are being held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Many claim they are innocent or were low-level Taliban members who never intended to harm the United States. Only 10 detainees have been charged with crimes and face military tribunals ordered by President Bush. While U.S. officials argue the suicides were political acts aimed at hurting American standing in the world, human rights activists and former detainees say prisoners are desperate after years in captivity and view suicide as the only way out even though Islam forbids it.
"A stench of despair hangs over Guantanamo," said Mark Denbeaux, a defense lawyer who visited a client at Guantanamo on June 2. "Everyone is shutting down and quitting," said the law professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey who along with his son, Joshua, represents two Tunisians at Guantanamo. He said he was alarmed by the depression he saw in his client, Mohammed Abdul Rahman, who was "trying to kill himself" by hunger strike. "He is normally a gentle, quiet, shy person," Denbeaux said late Saturday. "He sat there in a subdued state that was almost inert. He was colossally depressed." Denbeaux said he had intended to cheer Rahman up by showing him a newspaper article quoting President Bush as saying he wanted to close the jail. But the lawyer said guards confiscated the article because detainees are barred from seeing news of current events. "We wanted to say, 'We have some hope for you,'" Denbeaux said. "They wouldn't let us give him some hope." | Bloody bastards. Won't even give a nice quiet shy gentle terrorist any hope, or even mash notes from their fellow travellers at Reuters. |
That afternoon, Rahman was force-fed, the lawyer said. Force feeding involves strapping a hunger striker into a "restraint chair" and feeding him through a tube inserted into the nose. In the wake of the suicides, international demands to close the prison mounted. Two senior U.S. senators also expressed concern that most of the prisoners have not been charged with any crimes. A Saudi Arabian human rights group called for an outside investigation of the deaths.
Danish Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen, who supported Bush in the Iraq war, said the detention center's procedures violate "the very principle of the rule of law" and weaken the fight against terrorism. Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson said the deaths underlined the need to close the camp and bring detainees to trial or free them. Eliasson said the 25-nation European Union believes the facility should be closed. | See? See? Even the Swedes and the Danes can't bear it. O the humanity! |
A hearing scheduled this week for one was suspended after the suicides. Authorities were considering suspending all this month's hearings pending a Supreme Court on whether Bush overstepped his authority in setting up the tribunals. | There's a little more, but I can't stand the smell. |
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