Latest Guantánamo prison camp suicide was ‘indefinite detainee’

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: The Miami Herald

An Afghan man who was found hanging from a bedsheet at Guantánamo last month was held by the Pentagon as an “indefinite detainee” — an Obama administration designation originally conferred on 48 captives at the prison camps in Cuba.

Defense Department officials have not released the list of so-called indefinite detainees. Nor have they notified the men of their status as ineligible for either trial or release among the 171 captives currently held in Guantánamo.

But a Pentagon spokesman, Dave Oten, confirmed this week that the May 18 death of a captive known to his lawyers as Hajji Nassim and to the Defense Department as Inayatullah lowered the indefinite detainee tally.

“It’s a sad case, a very sad case,” said his Miami attorney Paul Rashkind on Tuesday. A federal public defender, Rashkind had been on the Afghan’s case for about a year. He said, though he had never been told of his client’s status as an indefinite detainee, he might have been able to persuade the government otherwise.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/28/2289119/latest-guantanamo-prison-camp.html

[Angry Dragon]

1. This shit needs to stop

you could end up there and no one would ever know

[ChrisBorg]

2. No longer indefinite I guess.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[Xipe Totec]

4. Teaching by example - way to promote liberty, freedom, and justice nt

[Arctic Dave]

5. Way to standup for american values Obama.

This is your clusterfuck too, you can't blame it on bush any longer.

[Freddie Stubbs]

22. President Obama tried to close it, but Congress forbid him from doing so

Are you suggesting that he break the law?

[No Elephants]

23. Holding people indefinitely without charging them or trying them IS breaking the law.

You don't have to close Gitmo to arrange for someone's release.

Besides, Obama needs to stop using Congress for political cover, then claiming he has no power to keep a campaign promise when his Democratic Congress trlld its its Democratic President "no."

Pelosie and Reid know very well how their members will vote before they take a vote. If Obama had really wanted to close Gitmo, he would have closed it without asking Congress for a permission he didn't need and knew he wouldn't get. A Commander in Chief has ample power and authority to open or close a prison camp.

I know some whine, "but Congress has to give him the money to close it." Please. AS if the military budget has nosclack in it.

Among other things, he managed to engage in Libya without getting extra money from Congress (or asking Congress for a declaration of war, as the Constitution requires, or complied with the War Powers Resolution). That's how he behaves when he actually does want to do something, as opposed to wanting political cover.. DADT (still not implemented), closing Gitmo and the public option were a dog and pony show.

[tekisui]

6. knr

[Newest Reality]

7. Guantánamo appears to be

an icon to be held in our peripheral awareness. It sits out there, and most effectively and subtly reminds us of where the MIC is taking us, step-by-step, day-by-day.

We are reminded that now, anyone can disappear and be held without any due process or the ability to evoke Constitutional rights. The un-Patriot Act and some Presidential powers underscore that fact. Either these powers will be utilized frequently when the time is right, or they will be rescinded by popular demand.

Historically, we should not tolerate this condition, as it is a real and present danger to our liberty and the justice we might expect. That fact that the Orwellian conditions are already in place and anyone can "unexist" proves that we are already over the line and really on the temptation of circumstances for utilization of these despotic potentials now in our midst.

[LiberalLovinLug]

8. So even his year long lawyer did not know his clients status?

Amazing what those small band of terrorists were able to do to the US constitution and civil liberties, habeus corpus etc... and creating the atmosphere for American fascists to elevate their stature and gain influence.

It would be nice if at the very least the ones that have received this "indefinite detainee" status are put on a public stand detailing to the public the crimes they have been accused of based on witnesses. Even if the witnesses are all US army members, or otherwise weak and suspect hearsay which would never hold up in a "real" court. I just want to know WHY. What individual crimes have each one of these committed that is so heinous that they will never taste freedom again.

[Downtown Hound]

9. Hate to say it, but this blood is on your hands, Obama

Anytime you want to quit following in fascist footsteps of former president Bush (remember, that guy who you promised us "change" from?) I won't complain.

[plumbob]

10. Gulag.

Shame.

[Diclotican]

11. plumbob

plumbob

At least the Russian government, from 1917 and forward to Gorbatsjev, who dispanded the unit in 1988, was clear about it all, that the Gulag Camp system was there..

The US government, are not able, or willing to admit that Gutanamo Bay Camp X Ray, are a Gulag camp, where peopole is keept for ever if the government shoose to do so.. Its maybe not that cold as in the old Gulag System.. But still..

Dicloticna

[plumbob]

13. I agree completely. This gulag offshore is one of the darkest blots on the US

and we've had plenty of others - slavery, genocide of First Americans, you name it.

I'm ashamed.

[Jefferson23]

12. The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle

*Just some background for those who may be interested:

Please enjoy Scott Horton’s feature from the March 2010 issue of Harper’s Magazine, winner of the National Magazine Award for Reporting.

1. “Asymmetrical Warfare”
When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

Late on the evening of June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.

As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guantánamo to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion.

in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

[EFerrari]

19. I remember this article. It was a really good one. n/t

[itsnotaboutu]

14. If There Is No Hope.......

To ever see the light at the end of the tunnel, to ever know freedom again, I think I would choose the same fate as this detainee, end the torture and find the light of a different world.

It is so horrible that these Reich-wing politicians can make the whole world feel so hopeless for so many, while they wallow in billions of dollars created by their faux war on terror.:hurts:

[Clear Blue Sky]

15. And Gitmo is still open because???

[CubicleGuy]

16. This must be the plan

Have them become so demoralized that they choose the big dirt nap instead of waiting for some kind of American justice system to come to their rescue. Pretty soon, the problem has taken care of itself, and the reputation of the United States that surely would have suffered should we have attempted to put any of these people through an actual trial remains mostly unsullied.

Except to anyone paying attention, that is.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

17. A pox on O's house for this. >:(

Bush started this shit, but O is making a disgusting mistake by continuing it. He brings shame on himself and shame on our country. :mad:

Liberals, where the hell are you on this issue???

[placton]

18. ya know, just FUCK Obama n/t

[bvar22]

20. This was not a

It was murder.
Under severe conditions, a human being will kill himself to escape prolonged torture.
Those imposing the conditions that drive someone to suicide are guilty of murder.

Here is what Campaign Obama had to say about Guantanamo and Human Rights:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-june-15-2010/respect-my-authoritah

[harun]

21. It is unjust to lock humans in a box indefinetly.

If they are guilty of a crime, try them and punish them. If they owe something to someone for this crime, have them fulfill it. If not, let them go.