All entries for Sunday 11 June 2006

Guantanamo Suicides are 'an act of war'

As you may well have heard three men have commited suicide at Guantanamo Bay (link).
According to the BBC, a camp commander at GTMO has called the suicides of three inmates (two Saudis and a Yemeni), ''[acts] of asymmetric warfare waged against [the US]''.

You can make your own mind up about that one, but I'm thinking there's just a little bit of spinning going on there. Plus it seems very rich of the US to be accusing detained inmates of adminstering a propaganda war against them, with the Pentagons "Psych Ops" so prevalent surrounding current conflicts.

What's most surprising to me is that these are the first to succesfully commit suicide in the prison. This is not for lack of effort, with dozen's of attempts being recorded over the past 4 years (though this is not surprising with the apparant hopelessness of many of them ever again seeing freedom, despite no charges being brought to them). I'll leave the accused torture/'interrogation' techniques to one side, but they are well documented.

I just can't get over the arrogance displayed by vilifying three men who, by our cherished Western values, were completely innocent.

UPDATE: A 'top government official' has now decribed the deaths as a ''good PR move''. I don't know about the dead inmates, but we're certainly getting a PR blitz coming from the powers that be in the US.

: 11 Jun 2006 11:27 |  Tags: Guantanamo |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem