Yemeni Detained Without Charges for Seven Years Kills Himself
Mohammad Ahmad Abdullah Saleh al Hanashi, a citizen of Yemen who has been incarcerated at Guantanamo since 2002, killed himself today:
Pentagon officials said he was a Taliban fighter who claimed at the camp that he had never killed anyone.
A terse announcement from the Pentagon described the death as an “apparent suicide” and said guards “found the detainee unresponsive and not breathing” while doing routine checks. It did not disclose a specific cause of death but said lifesaving measures had failed.
A spokesman for the Pentagon, Jose Ruiz, would not provide details, saying the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was investigating. Mr. Ruiz said an autopsy would be performed but added, “at this time they believe it was a suicide.”
David H. Remes, a lawyer who represents 16 other Yemeni prisoners at Guantánamo, said that Mr. Hanashi had been one of seven prisoners kept in a psychiatric ward at the prison and that he had been force-fed in a restraint chair. Mr. Remes said all the detainees in the psychiatric ward were kept under sedation. Guantánamo records show that Mr. Hanashi’s weight at one point fell to 87 pounds.
There have been five prior deaths at the camp, including four suicides.
[...]
Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has coordinated Guantánamo cases, said the death of a psychiatric patient raised questions about the quality of care and would increase pressure on Mr. Obama, who has said he would close the prison by January.“Every day that passes makes it more likely that people will die in detention on President Obama’s watch,” Mr. Kadidal said.
Obama administration officials have said that the camp is now a well-run prison that complies with international standards. But detainees’ lawyers and human rights groups say that conditions there remain bleak, with many detainees held in solitary confinement.
Mr. Remes, the lawyer with other Yemeni clients, said many prisoners are desperate. “They harbored some hope,” he said, “that President Obama would move swiftly to resolve the situation, but they can’t see any progress so far or any light at the end of the tunnel.”
I don’t even know what to say about this, or how to write about it. I am just so saddened, outraged, and disgusted that my country has become one of those countries that locks up political prisoners for years without charges or trial in conditions so hopeless and so devastating that the human beings caught in this horrendous system become so desperate that they kill themselves. And political prisoners is the right term, in my view, for people who are being detained indefinitely with no meaningful plan to say what they did wrong and give them a trial.
Aside from Jeralyn, who has a brief, facts-only post, the only other blogger writing about the suicide is Glenn Greenwald. Under the appropriately acid title, “Another Club Gitmo Guest Kills Himself,” Glenn writes:
Some of the most cartoonish pseudo-tough-guy, play-acting-warrior-low-lifes of the Right — Rush Limbaugh, The Weekly Standard, National Review‘s Andy McCarthy — have long referred to Guantanamo as “Club Gitmo.” Many leading national Republican politicians have (as usual) followed suit. Recently, some key Democrats have begun actively impeding plans to close it.
Today, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih — a 31-year old Yemeni who has been in a Gitmo cage since February, 2002 (more than seven years) without charges — became the latest Club Gitmo guest to successfully kill himself[.]
[...]
Putting people in cages for life with no charges — thousands of miles from their homes — is inherently torturous. While Salih acknowledged fighting for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, there is no evidence that he ever engaged in or planned to engage in terrorist acts or acts of violence of any kind against the U.S. Apparently, though, he’s one of the Worst of the Worst we keep hearing about — Too Dangerous To Release even if we can’t charge him with any crime.
In an update, Glenn quotes one of his readers on Saleh’s state of mind:
… Affirming Flame notes that the Penatgon’s status report on Salih reported: “When the detainee gets released, he hopes to go back to Yemen and get married. Once married, the detainee intends to go to school and become a history or geography teacher.” Affirming Flame adds:
This an intensely human tragedy that this man gave up on his dreams and his life. Obviously I can’t know what was going through his head during his final moments, but I do not think it is wildly speculative to imagine that he had given up any hope of ever being sent home and so found the only “release” available to him.
It’s very difficult to know why someone commits suicide, if that’s what happened here. And since he had no trial, one can’t know what Salih did or didn’t do. But what is not hard to see is that it is simply wrong to imprison people for life with no charges. That should not be something that we even have to debate.
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So how long should he of been there? Would Yemen of taken him back? Could we of let him out if we wanted? Innocent he was not as a foreign fighter in Afghanistan which still has an ongoing conflict. In no reasonable circumstance would a POW from a group that follow none of the conventions of war be released while that conflict is still going. Does that mean that there are no other issues, of course not. He should have had reasonable medical care and be housed in a decent secure facility. His death does not indicate that this was not the situation. It should trigger a evaluation of the conditions and situation. It does not automatically mean that there was a problem.
He was not a political prisoner. He was a member of the Taliban, a group of hard core extremist Muslims, caught on the battlefield in Afghanistan.
But, anyhow, if you want to use liberal talking points, then we can lay the blame at Obama's feet, since he said he would close it immediately after taking office, but didn't.
Ellis and Teach, you both either miss or avoid the point (depending on intention, which I don't know). The point is that Saleh should have been charged, if the evidence existed to do so, and given a trial, or released. His having been a “foreign fighter” does not mean we get to keep him in a cell for the rest of his life. If the evidence existed to charge him with a crime, he should have been so charged and given a legal trial. If not, he should have been released. The same is true for every other detainee still at Guantanamo.
What was done to Saleh and is still being done to detainees at Gitmo is unconscionable. And wiping your hands of it by saying “we can lay the blame at Obama's feet” for not having yet kept his promise to close Guantanamo is disgusting as well as being completely nonsensical. I hold Obama fully responsible for his actions and his decisions in regard to his campaign promises to close Guantanamo, but the fact remains that this is the previous administration's policy, and although Obama does have an obligation to reverse it, or undo it, he is not to blame for the fact that the policy has been in place for eight years, or for the human rights disaster it has created. What a despicable thing to say.
“His having been a “foreign fighter” does not mean we get to keep him in a cell for the rest of his life.”
Ah, yes…..yes it does.
He’s not charged with a crime because he’s not a criminal. He’s an enemy combatant. This little Yemeni has the right to be taken outside, placed against a wall and shot as a saboteur. It’s only by the grace of Allah and George W. Bush that he was alive and well, living the high life at Club Gitmo, when he foolishly decided to see if the virgins were waiting for him.
Did Greenwald say where to send flowers?
Ah, yes…..yes it does.
In fact, no, it doesn't, jwest — IF one is speaking from a rule of law perspective. I realize that you are speaking from a “might makes right” perspective completely disconnected from the rule of law.
He’s not charged with a crime because he’s not a criminal. He’s an enemy combatant.
It doesn't matter whether you call him a criminal or an enemy combatant, jwest. The label doesn't change the fact that democratic republics which claim to uphold the values inherent to liberal western democracies — rule of law and respect for human rights and the rights of the individual — do not keep people — any people — in indefinite, arbitrary detention without charges or trial, and without any actual evidence to justify such detention. The U.S. cannot be both the last best hope on earth and that shining light on the hill, and</b adopt and cling to the policies, actions, and justifications of the world's most lawless, murderous regimes. It's either one or the other. And I would respect your honesty, if not your viewpoint, a lot more if you stopped trying to have it both ways. Either Americans believe in democratic values or we do not. You can't believe and not believe in democratic values at the same time. You really can't.
“Saleh should have been charged, if the evidence existed to do so, and given a trial, or released. His having been a “foreign fighter” does not mean we get to keep him in a cell for the rest of his life.”
And where did you get this legal nugget of wisdom? He was an admitted enemy combatant of an ongoing conflict. What precedent says he should be released during the active conflict? Adding in of course that the group he belongs to follows none of the laws of war or any of the general conventions (as in practice, tradition not Geneva). Easy answer: NONE! Hell maybe he didn't break the law, just fought. Why should he be sentenced? That doesn't mean we should release him to continue fighting. Empathy is fine but it is no replacement for common sense.
From Wikipedia:
Enemy combatant is a term historically referring to members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war.[1][2] Prior to 2008, the definition was: “Any person in an armed conflict who could be properly detained under the laws and customs of war.” In the case of a civil war or an insurrection the term “enemy state” may be replaced by the more general term “Party to the conflict” (as described in the 1949 Geneva Conventions Article 3).[3]
In the United States the use of the phrase “enemy combatant” may also mean an alleged member of al Qaeda or the Taliban being held in detention by the U.S. government as part of the war on terror. In this sense, “enemy combatant” actually refers to persons the United States regards as unlawful combatants, a category of persons who do not qualify for prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions. Thus, the term “enemy combatant” has to be read in context to determine whether it means any combatant belonging to an enemy state, whether lawful or unlawful, or if it means an alleged member of al Qaeda or of the Taliban being detained as an unlawful combatant by the United States.