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One of the three men who committed suicide at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was due to be released – but did not know it, says a US lawyer. Mark Denbeaux, who represents some of the foreign detainees, told the BBC’s World Today programme the man was among 141 prisoners scheduled for release.
He said the prisoner was not told because US officials had not decided which country he would be sent to.
The Pentagon named the prisoner as Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi.
“We’ve just learned that one of the three people who killed himself was one of the 141 that we [the US] had scheduled to release. However our policy was we would refuse to tell people who were scheduled to be released until we had a location.”
“So we had decided this was a safe person, free to be released, but we needed a country to send him to, and his despair was great enough and in his ignorance he went and killed himself.”
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Gulf News) June 4 — The Saudi Society for Human Rights will formally ask United States President George Bush to release the remaining Saudi detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison and close the notorious detention centre.
As part of the pressure tactics to get the detainees released, the meeting agreed to convene an international human rights conference in Riyadh soon to draw attention to the condition of the Guantanamo detainees and intensify efforts for their release. Several prominent international human rights activists and representatives of human rights organisations will be invited to attend the conference.
“Where we have evidence, they ought to be tried, and if convicted, they ought to be sentenced,” Sen. Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, told reporters the men had been “determined to take their own lives. Prisoners at the camp are dangerous, committed to killing Americans.”
But the arrests of most of the roughly 500 prisoners held there were based on “the flimsiest sort of hearsay,” Specter said. The Pennsylvania Republican told reporters the administration faces “a tough situation,” since some of those held might return to their homelands to carry out attacks on Americans. “But too many have been detained for too long.”
Pentagon officials said the three men who committed suicide were held in the Guantanamo compound with the highest security. Brennan Linsley /AP
«« click on pic for story
AI Greece at the European Social
Forum in Athens, May 2006. © AI
Dutch right-wing party calls for urgent meeting of all EU Ministers of Foreign Affairs, to debate closure of Guantanamo Bay. See U.S. determination to control de MSM headlines by talking about a special Camp David Conference to determine U.S. policy towards Iraq. Hey George, why didn’t you think a policy through BEFORE GOING TO WAR!
Control of media content has never been as extreme sinds the last days of Nazi reign of Goebbels and the asymmetrical act of war: the Hitler suicide in the bunker of a destroyed Berlin capital.
The only reason for Guantanamo Bay prison to exist, is a front for the true nature of the the black prison network build by the Bush administration and the CIA of rendition, torture and possible execution of the true high-level detainees flown around the world with support of the world’s dictatorial regimes in Europe, North Africa and Central Asia. Well done George Bush, may all the White House nitwits of this administration burn in hell for destruction of the American dream and the adherence to International Law on Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions.
≈ See my recent diary — EU Governments Colluded with US on Rendition – Council of Europe ≈
Sun Jun 11th, 2006 at 11:54:09 AM PST
You may have already seen comments by the Camp Kommandant at Gitmo about the suicides being “an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” but the latest comments from the US administration take the biscuit. As it is the lead story on the BBC News you will realise it is not playing well here in the UK.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
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