23 Guantanamo suspects in mass self-harm bid

Twenty-three terror suspects tried to hang or strangle themselves at the United States military base in Guantanamo Bay on Cuba during a mass protest in 2003, the United States military confirmed.

The incidents came during the same year the camp suffered a rash of suicide attempts after Major General Geoffrey Miller took command of the prison with a mandate to get more information from prisoners accused of links to al-Qaida or the ousted Afghan Taliban regime that sheltered it.

Between August 18 and August 26, the 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves with pieces of clothing and other items in their cells, demonstrating “self-injurious behaviour”, the US Southern Command in Miami said in a statement. Ten detainees made a mass attempt on August 22 alone.

US Southern Command described it as “a co-ordinated effort to disrupt camp operations and challenge a new group of security guards from the just-completed unit rotation”.

Guantanamo officials classified two of the incidents as attempted suicides and informed reporters.

But they but did not previously release information about the mass hangings and stranglings during that period.

Those incidents were mentioned casually during a visit earlier this month by three journalists, but officials then immediately denied there had been a mass suicide attempt.

Further attempts to get details brought a statement on Friday night, with some clarifications provided today by military officials at Guantanamo Bay and the US Southern Command.

Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for Amnesty International’s office in Washington, today criticised the delay in reporting the incident.

“When you have suicide attempts or so-called self-harm incidents, it shows the type of impact indefinite detention can have, but it also points to the extreme measures the Pentagon is taking to cover up things that have happened in Guantanamo,” he said.

“What we’ve seen is that it wasn’t simply a rotation of forces but an attempt to toughen up the interrogation techniques and processes.”

Officials said today that they differentiated between a suicide attempt in which a detainee could have died without intervention and a “gesture” they considered aimed only at getting attention.

Army General Jay Hood, who succeeded Miller as the detention mission’s commander last year, has said the number of incidents has decreased since 2003, when the military set up a psychiatric ward.

In 2003, there were 350 “self-harm” incidents, including 120 “hanging gestures”, according to Lt Col Leon Sumpter, a spokesman for the detention mission.

Last year, there were 110 self-harm incidents, he said.

“The Joint Detention Operations Group continually assesses the camp’s population for whom the informal leaders are, the mood of the detainees, and their ability to communicate with each other,” Southern Command said in a statement.

“That assessment has enabled the leadership to take numerous measures to reduce the opportunity for detainees to communicate a coordinated self-harm incident, or strike out at another detainee or the guard force.”

Other information of alleged abuses has come through Freedom of Information Act requests from the American Civil Liberties Union, which said yesterday that some included US Navy emails dated August 2003 – the month of the mass protest - asking what should be done if a detainees died.

One message asks if remains should be sent for an autopsy to Germany or the US Dover Air Force Base.

“Personally, I suspect that remains should probably NOT be brought to the US for legal reasons,” says the response. Names were redacted from the messages, among thousands of documents provided to the ACLU only after a court order.

“Did you guys already have this worked out when they had the attempted suicide …?” asks a subsequent message.

An FBI email dated October 20, 2002, warns of “a threat of mass suicide” after an announcement that four prisoners would be repatriated – three from Afghanistan, one from Tajikistan.

“The camp erupted in unrest,” it reads, but “quickly settled down”.

The military has reported 34 suicide attempts since the camp opened in 2002, including one prisoner going into a coma and sustaining memory loss from brain damage.

Of the 23 men who tried to hang or strangle themselves during the 2003 protest, two required hospital treatment and then were transferred to the psychiatric ward, the military statement said.

Sixteen remain at Guantanamo Bay, while seven were transferred to other countries, the statement said without giving details. Some transferred detainees have been released while others continue to be detained in their native or other countries.

Guantanamo Bay is believed to hold more than 600 detainees of some 36 nationalities.