3 Suicides at Guantanamo Prison Renews Calls for Closing "America's Gulag"

Interview with Retired Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist, conducted by Scott Harris

Three detainees at the U.S. Navy's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were found dead in their cells June 10, after hanging themselves with clothes and bed sheets. Two of the men who killed themselves were from Saudi Arabia and one was from Yemen. About 460 people, many of them captured in Afghanistan, have been imprisoned at the Pentagon-run facility some for as long as 4 1Ž2 years. Only 10 of the prisoners there have been charged with crimes while the remaining detainees have been held without charges or trials.

The Pentagon admits that there had been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees at Guantanamo, and as many as 89 inmates have participated in hunger strikes this year. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Coleen Graffy commented that the suicides were "a good PR move," while Rear Adm. Harry Harris, Guantanamo's commander characterized the inmate's deaths as "asymmetric warfare."

The three suicides have renewed calls for the closure of the Guantanamo facility. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, European governments and religious denominations are among the international groups that have demanded that the prison be closed. Between the Lines Scott Harris spoke with retired Brig. Gen. and psychiatrist Stephen Xenakis, a spokesperson with Physicians for Human Rights, who discusses the conditions at the Guantanamo detention center that contributed to the suicides of the three detainees.

Contact Physicians for Human Rights by calling (202) 728-5335 or visit their website at www.phrusa.org

Related links:

* Amnesty International

* Center for Constitutional Rights

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