Via The Independent, a doctor who works at Gitmo and spoke anonymously to reporters at the newspaper blames Red Cross protocols for not allowing the prompt discovery of the recent suicide victims at the facility:
He said medical personnel examined the detainees some 10 minutes after they were found and “did everything we could” to revive them. He suggested that American guards might have noticed the detainees sooner had the prison not been following International Red Cross recommendations, including how dark their cells should be at night. “If we did everything the Red Cross wanted, there would be very little that we could do to keep detainees alive short of putting them in a strait-jacket,” he said.
“Every time we give them something to make their lives easier, they use it against us by trying to harm themselves.” Since the deaths, the military is guarding against future suicides by only giving out bed sheets and blankets during sleeping hours and monitoring detainees in their cells every three minutes.
Despite the obvious need to change the guards’ monitoring techniques, the same doctor also said that he agreed with Admiral Harry Harris’s assertion that the suicides were politically motivated – an act of ‘asymmetrical warfare’ – because the doctor says he has determined that the detainees were not depressed prior to the incidents.
The doctor suggested the examinations, performed one to two weeks before the suicides on 10 June, supported assertions by military officials that the prisoners killed themselves as a political act – not because they were despondent about their prolonged detention.
A lot can change in ‘one to two weeks’, especially in an environment like Gitmo where detainees are held indefinitely and have no idea what the future holds for them.
The doctor said there have been no suicide attempts since the deaths on 10 June, but there have been several incidents of detainees harming themselves, such as cutting themselves with paint chips or beating their heads against walls.
One can only conclude, according to the doctor’s logic, that those detainees were also just making political statements.
Sidebar: Yes, I’ve actually posted two diaries here today – a very unusual move – but this story must be seen far and wide.
(crossposted from liberal catnip.)
