Guantanamo Suicide Report: Truth or Travesty?

Two years and two months after three prisoners at Guantánamo died, apparently as the result of a coordinated suicide pact, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which has been investigating the deaths ever since the three long-term hunger strikers were found dead in their cells on June 10, 2006, issued a 934-word statement on Friday that purported to draw a line under the whole sordid affair.

The deaths of the three men -- Ali al-Salami, Mani al-Utaybi and Yasser al-Zahrani -- have been controversial from the moment that they were first announced, when Guantánamo's then-Commander, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, attracted international opprobrium by declaring that they were an act of "asymmetric warfare," and Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, had similar scorn heaped upon her when she described the men's deaths as a "good PR move."

As I have explained previously, the administration soon assumed a slightly more placatory role, when Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, declared, "I wouldn't characterize it as a good PR move. What I would say is that we are always concerned when someone takes his own life, because as Americans, we value life, even the lives of violent terrorists who are captured waging war against our country."

In keeping with the unjustified rhetoric that concluded Stimson's "apology," the Pentagon proceeded to pump out propaganda portraying the men as terrorists, even though, like all the prisoners in Guantánamo, the majority of the information against them had come from interrogations in which torture and coercion were widespread, and none of the men had ever been screened adequately to determine whether or not there was any basis for their automatic designation as "enemy combatants" who could be held indefinitely without charge or trial.

Al-Zahrani, who was only 17 years old at the time of his capture, was accused of being a Taliban fighter who "facilitated weapons purchases," even though this scenario was highly unlikely, given his age. In al-Utaybi's case, he was declared an "enemy combatant" because of his involvement with Jamaat-al-Tablighi, a vast worldwide missionary organization whose alleged connection to terrorism was duly exaggerated by the Pentagon, which had the effrontery to describe the avowedly apolitical organization as "an al-Qaeda 2nd tier recruitment organization." The administration also admitted that al-Utaybi had actually been approved for "transfer to the custody of another country" in November 2005, although Navy Commander Robert Durand said he "did not know whether al-Utaybi had been informed about the transfer recommendation before he killed himself." In the case of al-Salami, who was captured in a guest house in Pakistan with over a dozen other prisoners, most of whom have persistently claimed that they were students, the Pentagon alleged that he was "a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative who had key ties to principal facilitators and senior members of the group."

Sadly, the NCIS statement (published in full here) does little to address long-standing concerns about the circumstances of the men's deaths. The investigators unreservedly backed up the suicide story by reporting that "Autopsies were performed by physicians from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Naval Hospital Guantánamo on June 10 and 11. The manner of death for all detainees was determined to be suicide and the cause of death was determined to be by hanging, the medical term being 'mechanical asphyxia.'"

Their major contribution to the story of the men's deaths was to revive claims that they had left suicide notes. They wrote that "A short written statement declaring their intent to be martyrs was found in the pockets of each of the detainees," and that "Lengthier written statements were also found in each of their cells."