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Four Suspected Suicide Attempts, Melee at Guantánamo

CAROL ROSENBERG
Miami Herald
May 19, 2006

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Four foreign captives tried to kill themselves today -- three with drug overdoses, another by hanging -- at this offshore detention center for suspected terrorists.

A succession of military announcements handed to reporters after 8 p.m. described the attempts -- and a clash between captives and guards in a minimum-security compound as sailors intervened to save the life of a detainee trying to hang himself.

''A detainee in Camp 4 was preparing to hang himself,'' said a statement issued by Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, a prison spokesman.

When the guard force went to stop it, detainees used ''fans light fixtures and other items as improvised weapons,'' he said.

The surge in violence happened on the same day that 15 long-held captives from Saudi Arabia were repatriated to their oil-rich kingdom in the largest mass transfer from the prison camps here in more than a year.

''I have no idea of motive, no idea of any coordination -- and no idea of any intended message,'' said Durand, who added that guards would hold a cell search for contraband.

The Saudi Foreign Minister had earlier announced that 16 would be repatriated.

Durand was unable to say initially whether there was a link between the event that dropped the enemy combatant population to ``approximately 460.''

He also could not characterize whether the captives who took part in the melee or the suicide attempts were Saudi.

At most 10 captives took part in the melee, said Durand -- and were moved out of the minimum-security barracks compound to maximum-security single-cell prison camps.

Elsewhere in the sprawling prison camps along a bluff overlooking the Caribbean, three captives classified as enemy combatants separately took ''prescription medications that apparently had been hoarded for this purpose,'' Durand said.

The detention center spokesman declined to identify the men, or so far say where they were from or provide any personal details.

Guards and medical staff responded quickly, the commander said -- and they were given ``activated charcoal to absorb and neutralize the medications.''

By evening two men were hospitalized and under observation with normal vital signs, Durand said.

The captive who tried to hang himself, and one of the captives who tried to overdose were seen by medical staff and sent back to their cells, he added.

Before Thursday, at least 23 captives tried to kill themselves 39 times behind the razor wire since the United States set up America's offshore detention center for suspected terrorists in January 2002.

Before Thursday, there had been only one in 2006.

Of the 39 earlier attempts, according to Durand, one detainee has tried to do it 12 separate times.

That man has been identified by his attorney as Juma'a Dosari, a Bahraini who at one point slashed his skin and tried to hang himself inside a holding cell during a bathroom break from a meeting with the lawyer.

Detention center ''policy is to preserve the life of detainees by all appropriate clinical means,'' a military announcement said announcement said.

It was also noteworthy that the melee with the guards took place in Camp 4, where 175 captives live in prisoner-of-war style barracks housing -- praying together and eating together in groups of up to 20 at a time.

They sleep 10 to a bunkhouse and are considered the ''most compliant'' with their guards, safe enough to live communally -- some in a pre-release setting.

Medical and military workers at the detention center sometimes distinguish between suicide attempts and ``self-harm episodes.''

In 2003, the prison recorded 350 self-harm'' events, including 120 hanging gestures,'' by detainees.

That figure dipped to 110 occurrences in 2004.

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