 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A detainee at the US Guantanamo Bay detention center who has repeatedly attempted suicide has warned that he still hopes to kill himself out of despair over his confinement and conditions at the American military jail in Cuba. Juma Mohammed Al Dossary said in a letter released Sunday that he would prefer death than his open-ended detention at Guantanamo, where he complains that he and other detainees have been mistreated _ an accusation denied by the US military. 'I swear to God, if I have the opportunity I would end my life,Â’ Al Dossary says in the letter, which was reviewed by the US military before its release.
| Well if you feel that strongly about it ... |
The 33-year-old detainee, who has been held at the camp without charges since January 2002, has tried to kill himself at least 10 times at Guantanamo, according to the US government.
| And we stopped him each time. I blame Bush. |
In an October 2005 attempt, Al Dossary slashed his arm and tried to hang himself during a break in a meeting with his attorney, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan. The former chief medical officer at Guantanamo said in court papers filed a month after the incident that the detainee has undisclosed mental health issuesÂ’ and has often refused to take medicine or cooperate with therapists.
Colangelo-Bryan, who met with the prisoner for seven hours in April, said the detainee is completely coherentÂ’ but severely depressed about his situation. He seemed utterly exhausted and desperate,Â’ the attorney said in a telephone interview from New York.
| Of course he's depressed: he was promised jihad, paradise and 72 virgins, and instead he's cooling his heels at Gitmo. No kidding he's depressed. |
Al Dossary is a native of Bahrain who served as an imam for about six months at a mosque in Bloomington, Indiana, in about 2000.
| Best six months of his life ... |
Colangelo-Bryan said the detainee was accused by the military of having been at Osama bin LadenÂ’s stronghold in AfghanistanÂ’s Tora Bora mountains but he has not been charged with any crime.
| He doesn't have to be charged with a crime. He's not a criminal, he's a detainee captured at gunpoint on a foreign battlefield. |
His lawyer denies any links to terrorist activities.
In the letter, which was dated April 18 and cleared for release by the US government last week, Al Dossary said he has been subjected to unspecified torture,Â’ and that two other detainees have been abused by the guard force. He says he has been deprived of basic comforts, forced to sleep on the cement floor with his pants and an orange shirt to cover himself.
We are facing here the most horrible type of oppression and physical torture,Â’ he said in the letter, which was translated from Arabic by his attorney. At another point, he writes: I want to put an end to this psychological and physical torture by any means. I am looking for an end to my life.Â’
A US military spokesman denied the allegations of torture, saying that all detainees are treated humanely and noting that Al Qaeda has trained its operatives to claim abuse while in detention. 'This tactic is used in order to gain public sympathy in the hopes that they may be released,Â’ Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said Sunday.
| Something that never seems to be stressed in the MSM. |
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