Guantanamo desperation 'revealed'

From correspondents in Washington

06/20/06 "The Australian" --- -THE Pentagon's own records showed inmates were desperate before three committed suicide at a US jail in Guantanamo, a US rights group said today, when the papers were made public.

"These documents are the latest evidence of the desperate and immoral conditions that exist at Guantanamo Bay," American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero said.

"The injustices at Guantanamo (Cuba) need to be remedied before other lives are lost," he said.

About 1000 pages made public include a medical report from April 29, 2003, on a previous suicide attempt with a towel.

The patient was in a "vegetative state" from a brain injury after the hanging, the report said.

The medical staff at the US Navy base "most strongly advocated" for the inmate's "earliest return to his home country" noting his "history of depression".

Another of the documents showed that an inmate wanted to write his will, which he was allowed to do.

"Death had been entering his mind lately," the report said, adding that the inmate had said he was not suicidal.

The three inmates died on June 10 of apparent suicides. Opponents of the camp immediately called for its closure.

European governments, a UN human rights panel and various rights groups have called on the US to shut down its "war on terror" detention centre at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

However, a State Department official called the suicides a public relations gimmick and the commander of the camp called the suicides an act of war, further angering opponents and US allies.

Most of the about 460 inmates at the camp have been held since early 2002 without charges or access to a lawyer.

"It is astounding that the government continues to paint the suicides as acts of warfare instead of taking responsibility for having driven individuals in its custody to such acts of desperation," Amrit Singh, of the ACLU immigrants' rights project, said.

© The Australian

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