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EU to press for Guantánamo closure
Edward Alden
Financial Times
June 12 2006
The European Union plans to use next week's US-EU summit in Vienna to reiterate calls for the US to close its GuantánamoBay detention facility in Cuba, after three inmates hanged themselves at the weekend, the first suicides at the prison.
"Guantánamo should be closed. This is an occasion to reiterate that statement," Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU external relations commissioner, said on Monday after a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
Lawyers for the detainees called for an independent investigation of the deaths, saying the suicides were the inevitable result of years of isolation, abuse and the lack of any legal processes.
"The US bears complete and utter responsibility for these deaths," said Gitanjali Gutierrez, staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees who have been seeking unsuccessfully to have their imprisonment reviewed by the US courts.
"This was an act of desperation," she said. "It has escalated to the point where men are willing to die, and want to die, rather than being held in those conditions any longer."
Two Saudi detainees and one Yemeni were found dead on Saturday after hanging themselves with clothing. The deaths were the first among the nearly 800 prisoners who have spent time at the facility. While US officials say there had been 41 suicide attempts, the close monitoring of detainees had previously prevented any suicides.
US military officials claimed that conditions at the prison had nothing to do with the deaths. The commander of the Guantánamo prison, Rear Adm Harry Harris Jr, said at the weekend the suicides were "not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare against us". All three men were described by US officials as committed terrorists who were prepared to become martyrs to their cause.
Both the deaths and the US response were reverberating internationally on Monday. Jean Asselborn, the Luxembourg foreign minister, said: "It's hard to understand why when three people kill themselves, that is an attack on America. Something has to change in the American mentality."
Relatives of the two Saudis refused to accept that they had committed suicide, saying they had probably been killed.
The US has faced growing criticism over the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists since the prison was opened in 2002. A United Nations committee that monitors torture last month called for the US to close the prison.
The White House has said it wants to bring the prisoners to trial before special military tribunals, but the effort has faced multiple legal challenges from civilian and military lawyers who say the detainees cannot get a fair trial before such panels. The US Supreme Court is expected to rule shortly on the legality of the tribunals.
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