Suicides fuel European calls for closure of Guantanamo

Detainees being processed into the detention facility inside Guantanamo Bay. File picture / Reuters

REUTERS - Europeans seized on the suicides of Guantanamo prisoners as more proof the US camp should be closed, and a top US official yesterday disowned a colleague's comment that the deaths were a "good PR move".

Two Saudis and a Yemeni hanged themselves with clothes and bedsheets in their cells at the weekend, the first prisoners to die at Guantanamo since the United States began sending suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives there in 2002.

"Guantanamo should be closed. This is an occasion to reiterate that statement," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told reporters at a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

Germany said the US government had promised to provide it with a full explanation of the suicides.

Last month, the foreign minister of the EU's Austrian Presidency, Ursula Plassnik, said Guantanamo was "an anomaly" and should be shut down as quickly as possible. The European Parliament has called for the camp's closure.

Camp commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris described the suicides over the weekend as acts of asymmetrical warfare.

Colleen Graffy, US deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, said the deaths were "a good PR move".

"It does sound that this is part of a strategy in that they don't value their own life and they certainly don't value ours and they use suicide bombings as a tactic to further their Jihadi cause," she said.

Graffy co-ordinates efforts with special envoy Karen Hughes in a campaign to improve the US image abroad, especially in Islamic countries.

Her comments quickly appeared to be bad PR moves for the US administration.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson, speaking to BBC radio on Monday, distanced himself from them.

"I wouldn't characterise 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," he said.

In an editorial headlined "Bad Language", the Times, normally a defender of Britain's alliance with the United States, said such rhetoric "plays once again into the hands of America's enemies".

The Guardian described Admiral Harris' remarks as "cold and odious". "The demented logic of Dr Strangelove hung like a ghost" over the US response to the suicides, it said.

Britain has been Washington's closest ally in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Prime Minister Tony Blair has been cautious in criticising Guantanamo, which he describes as an "anomaly".

But other senior British officials have called for the camp to be closed down.

"If it is perfectly legal and there is nothing going wrong there, why don't they have it in America?" Constitutional Affairs Minister Harriet Harman said.

Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry identified the two Saudis as Manei al-Otaibi and Yasser al-Zahrani but gave no further details. Pentagon documents show Zahrani was 21, meaning he was sent to Guantanamo as a teenager.

The US military identified the Yemeni as Ali Abdullah Ahmed and described all three as "dangerous enemy combatants".

"I am confident my son did not commit suicide," Talal al-Zahrani, Yasser's father, told a newspaper in Saudi Arabia. "The story of the US administration is a lie."

His brother Abdullah said: "He was killed."

The camp holds 460 foreigners, most captured in Afghanistan. Before Saturday, 23 prisoners had made 41 suicide attempts, which rights advocates call evidence of despair and isolation.

US President George W. Bush said on Friday he would like to empty Guantanamo and was working to repatriate detainees.

Most prisoners have been held without charges, and face indefinite detention with none of the rights afforded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions or to criminal suspects in the US justice system.

Riyadh declined to say if it would ask for a probe into the deaths but pledged more efforts to bring back all Saudis detained at Guantanamo, estimated at up to 103.

- REUTERS