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US officials are still lying about
suicide attempts at Guantanamo prison
by Helen & Harry Highwater, Unknown News
June 11, 2006
When suicide attempts at the Guantanamo prison facility first came to the media's attention, CBS News reported on August 15, 2002 that there had been "about thirty" suicide attempts:
Doctors at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly say that in the seven months that the U.S. has been keeping al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners there, about thirty have tried to kill themselves.
Nine months later, on May 28, 2003, Associated Press reported two more suicide attempts at Guantanamo, which somehow brought the total down to just 27:
These brought the number of suicide attempts to 27, said Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the Camp Delta prison.
Seventeen of the suicide attempts have been this year [2003]. ...
Both times, reporters were quoting official spokespeople, referring to all suicide attempts at the prison since it opened in January 2002. Yet the number got smaller.
And then, a year later, as more suicide attempts drew media scrutiny, Associated Press reported on August 14, 2003 that there had been thirty suicide attempts, most of which had occurred that year:
The prisoner's attempt to kill himself this week brings the number of suicide attempts to 30 since the high-security prison was opened in January 2002, Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind said.
Most attempts occurred this year, which officials and critics alike have attributed to the effects of the indefinite detentions on prisoner morale. Some of the prisoners have been held for more than a year and a half without charges, access to lawyers or indications of whether or when they may be freed. ...
And yet, the total number of suicide attempts was only three more than three months earlier. And with more and more suicide attempts, the total number of attempts since the prison opened was exactly the same as the number reported a year earlier.
Over the next many months, there were occasional reports on the recurring problem of suicide attempts at Guantanamo, telling readers that suicide attempts were on the rise, but these reports did not quote military spokesmen on how many suicide attempts there had been. We thought perhaps reporters had noticed that the numbers they had been told made no sense, or military spokesmen had been told to stop making up numbers out of thin air.
Twenty-three prisoners tried to hang or strangle themselves during a mass protest at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, the US military has revealed.
The action took place during a period of several days in August that year, the military said in a statement.
A spokesman said the incidents were "gestures" aimed at getting attention, and only two of the prisoners were considered suicidal.
As a friend of ours, SirJ, wrote, that's "the Defense Department's modern math: Reclassify suicide attempts to distinguish between 'attention-getting behavior' (i.e. protests) and suicidal behavior (i.e. end up in critical condition). Now they can shift the numbers to be whatever they want, by moving attempts back and forth between the 'attention-getting gestures' column and the suicidal-intent column."
That same BBC report cited a total of "34 suicide attempts at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002" --excluding "350 incidents of self-harm, including 120 hanging gestures," just in 2003.
In the Washington Post on April 8, 2006, a military spokesman said that one particularly stubborn prisoner, Jumah al-Dossari, keeps trying to kill himself, and that's why the total number of suicide attempts since the prison opened has skyrocketed... to 39:
Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said yesterday that there has been one suicide attempt at the facility so far this year -- on March 11 -- and that the detainee is "clinically stable." But Durand would not identify him.
Apparently referring to Dossari, Durand noted that a single detainee accounts for 12 of the 39 suicide attempts at Guantanamo Bay since it opened in 2002.
Six weeks later, on May 19, 2006, Associated Press reported that there had been four suicide attempts in one particularly bad day at Guantanamo. But 39 + 4 = 39, according to the US military, because the total number of suicide attempts at Guantanamo is still 39:
Prisoners wielding improvised weapons clashed with guards trying to stop a detainee from committing suicide at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military said Friday.
The fight occurred Thursday in a medium-security section of the camp as guards were responding to the fourth attempted suicide that day at the detention center on the U.S. Navy base, said Cmdr. Robert Durand.
There have been 39 suicide attempts at Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, the military said. ...
A few weeks after that, in a report about a hunger strike among 75 prisoners at Guantanamo, the same military spokesman, Cmdr. Robert Durand, told an MSNBC reporter that the hunger strikes ...
"... may also be related to an outbreak of violence at the camp on May 18, when two detainees tried to commit suicide by overdosing on hoarded medicine. Several others attacked guards who rushed into a communal barracks to stop an attempted hanging that was later determined to be a ruse."
So in the two weeks since it had happened, four suicide attempts in one day had been reduced to two suicide attempts and one "ruse."
In early June, three prisoners at Guantanamo found their only way off the island, hanging themselves with nooses made of their bed sheets. According to a military press release, these were the first deaths at Guantanamo since the prison opened, and said the prisoners' remains were being treated "with the utmost respect." And CBS News reported ...
"Until now, Guantanamo officials have said there have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees and no deaths since the United States began taking prisoners to the base in January 2002. Defense lawyers contend the number of suicide attempts is higher."
This would mean there have now been at least 44 suicide attempts at Guantanamo, three of which have been successful.
So if you believe the military's spokespeople (we certainly don't) there were thirty suicide attempts in the first eight months Guantanamo was open. And over the subsequent four years, despite all the articles about the growing number of suicide attempts on Guantanamo, there have only been eleven more suicide attempts, and three suicides.
And of course, the Bush-Cheney administration's policy is to lie about everything. Compared to their lies about the reasons for war, their lies about torture, and their lies about the Constitution, their ongoing lies about suicide attempts at Guantanamo are fairly trivial.
It's just disappointing that our government fills high-level well-paid lie-dispensing positions with half-assed liars whose lies can be so easily called into question.
We ask you: Doesn't the American taxpayer at least deserve lies that are plausible?
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