Six detainees have been injured at Guantánamo Bay in the most violent uprising since the prison began holding suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban supporters four years ago.
Clashes broke out on Thursday night as 10 detainees wielding improvised weapons made from lights, fans and pieces of metal, fought with 10 US military guards, according to the Pentagon. The revolt was suppressed with ”non-lethal force”, including rubber bullets and pepper spray. Six of the detainees were treated for minor injuries, while some of the guards suffered bruising.
The incident was the second organised protest by prisoners in less than a year, following last August’s mass hunger strike; it was seen by human rights activists as a sign of growing despair among the prison’s inmates.
According to Guantánamo Bay naval base commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the unrest began when guards were set upon as they came to the aid of a detainee pretending to hang himself in Camp Four, a medium security section of the base where prisoners live in groups of 10.
Earlier on Thursday, two other prisoners made suicide attempts by swallowing prescription medicine they had been hoarding. Military officers on Friday described them as stable but unconscious.
The US is under increasing international pressure to close the prison, where 460 people are held. The United Nations Committee Against Torture on Friday called for the prison to be closed and said the US should refrain from using secret detention facilities elsewhere in the world or from sending detainees to countries where they might face torture. ”The state party should cease to detain any person at Guantánamo Bay and close the detention facility,” the committee said in a report.
The incident raised concerns among human rights activists and lawyers for detainees about the increasing despondency of the people held at Guantánamo, who have been detained without trial for more than four years.
There have been 41 suicide attempts at the facility since it was opened in January 2002 to house prisoners seized on the battlefields of Afghanistan, and suspected members of al-Qaida.
In 2003, according to the US military, 23 detainees carried out a coordinated attempt to kill themselves during a week-long protest. The attempts were classified as ”self-injurious behaviour” rather than suicide attempts.
One prisoner, Bahraini Juma’a al-Dossari, has made 12 suicide attempts in four years — including one last October during a visit by his attorney, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan. ”I saw a pool of blood on the floor in front of me, and then I looked up and saw him hanging from the inside of the steel mesh wall of the cell. He had a large gash in his arm, and he was unconscious,” Colangelo-Bryan told The Guardian.
James Yee, a former US army chaplain at Guantánamo, said the number of suicide attempts had become much worse. ”When I was down there it was happening pretty often,” he told CNN.
Last August, more than 120 prisoners went on hunger strike to protest at their indefinite imprisonment and beatings by the Immediate Response Force squads which are used to put down such protests.
In Afghanistan, officials claimed to have captured a leading Taliban commander on Friday night as the southern provinces reeled from a storm of insurgent violence. But the fate of Mullah Dadullah, a one-legged commander thought to have masterminded a recent wave of suicide bombings, remained unclear.
A senior Afghan government official confirmed Afghan television and BBC reports that Dadullah was in Afghan custody. But the US-led coalition and the Afghan army refused to confirm the news.
Dadullah is close to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and a member of the 10-man leadership council. In December he claimed to have a 200-strong team of suicide bombers ready to attack western troops, including 3Â 300 British troops deploying to Helmand province. – Guardian Unlimited