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Three war on terror prisoners commit coordinated suicide
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US dismisses this as “asymmetrical warfare”
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Human Rights groups castigate inhuman treatment of prisoners by US
Three inmates at the US prison camp at Guantanomo Bay have reportedly
committed suicide using bed sheets and personal clothing under mysterious
circumstances that the US calls a "mystical" effort to free their peers. This
incident has raised serious questions on how the US treats its prisoners of the
war on terror as Guantanomo saw 41 suicide attempts by 23 inmates and only 10
of the 460 people have been formally charged.
Islamist groups are quick to refute the claim of suicide because such action
is considered anti-Islamic and those held in Guantanomo Bay are mostly Whhabbi
Sunnis who accept the words of Koran literally refusing the question or
interpret them. Seen from that perspective, the deaths are a surprise not
because of the act but because of those who performed it.
Lawyers defending the detainees aver that it is despair and hopelessness that
drove them to suicide. Human Rights Watch Ken Roth said "Sadly, suicides like
these are entirely predictable when people are held outside the law with no end
in sight." The International Committee of the Red Cross said that the long
detention "adds to the mental strain."
The US was quick to minimize this effort by suggesting that the inmates were
using a clever strategy to humiliate the country using "creative" methods. Rear
Admiral Harry B Harris Jr. said "They are smart, they are creative, they are
committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe
that this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare
waged against us." The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has opened up
investigation into the three simultaneous deaths.
The New York Times said that the suicide notes written in Arabic talk about a
belief system that required these three to die for the other detainees to be
released. It is not clear if this meant that the coordinated suicides are a
form of "asymmetrical warfare," a coordinated pacifist protest, a ritual
sacrifice, an attempt to bring international attention to the plight of the
detainees, or plain despair of the detainees.
The US has detained 759 people mostly from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen,
and Pakistan and smaller numbers from most Islamic countries and some Chechens
from Russia, Uygurs from China, and some Islamic citizens of the UK, France,
Canada, Australia, and Belgium.
Simultaneous to these coordinated suicides, there were also unverified reports
that the US forces found Iraqi terrorist Abu al Zarqawi alive but bludgeoned
him to death. The US Commanding Officer in Iraq General George Casey dismissed
this report as "ludicrous" insisting that he himself has seen the autopsy
report and there was nothing in it to support this allegation.
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