Monday, September 24, 2012

Another innocent detainee dies in Guantanamo...

Two weeks ago, the Pentagon quietly released a statement that another Guantanamo detainee had died in custody, the ninth since the prison was opened in 2001. Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 32-year-old man from Yemen who had spent eleven years incarcerated, was found dead in his cell on September 8.

The cause of his death has been recorded as unknown and may never truly be known, but Latif had long suffered from feelings of extreme depression during his time in jail, having made several suicide attempts in the previous years.

Latif had long complained of abuse by prison staff and of his deteriorating physical and mental condition during his imprisonment. Two years earlier, he had written that guards "entered my cell on a regular basis. They throw me and drag me on the floor... they strangle me and press hard behind my ears until I lose consciousness". In 2009 he slit his wrists in an attempt to end his life, writing about the incident later to his lawyer to say that his circumstances in Guantanamo "make death more desirable than living".

Latif was initially captured by Pakistani bounty hunters in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks when a mixture of confusion and desire for vengeance resulted in the effective labelling of any military age Arab males found in Afghanistan and Pakistan as potential terrorists. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Another Guantánamo prisoner death highlights Obama's hypocrisy...
  2. ''Obama had no balls to close Gitmo''
  3. Eleven years after 9/11, Guantanamo is a political prison...
  4. Obama's Change: Killing without trial, spying without warrant...
  5. US doctors turned 'blind eye' to Guantanamo torture...
  6. 6 years of solitary confinement and torture for a teen at Guantanamo...
  7. Confessions of a Guantanamo guard...
  8. Bradley Manning's inhumane treatment continues ...
  9. A 48-year-old Afghan citizen dies at Guantanamo after 9 years in a cage and...

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