Topic: Detainees' Suicides Came By Hanging

Miami Herald
October 18, 2007 By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE -- All four captives who killed themselves at prison camps for suspected terrorists hanged themselves in their cells, a senior officer said Wednesday.
''We've had four individuals commit suicide -- all of them hanging -- three of the four in a cradle-like noose,'' said Navy Capt. Patrick McCarthy, the senior lawyer on the prison camps management team.
McCarthy is a member of the military's senior staff whose tenure at this remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba straddled both episodes -- the suicides by three Arabs in June 2006 followed by the suicide of a former Saudi Arabian soldier in May 2007. So far, camp officials have refused to discuss the circumstances of that death.
The means by which the men killed themselves has long been a subject of interest because prison camp tours for media and visitors emphasize that Camp Five is designed with suicide proofing such as towel hooks that won't bear the weight of a detainee, to prevent him from hanging himself.
The Navy Criminal Investigative Service is still investigating the circumstances of all four deaths.
But McCarthy said he saw the four dead men -- each one hanging -- and that the first three men had used sling-style nooses. The fourth man, identified at the time of his death as Abdul Rahman al Amri, 31, had fashioned ''a string type of noose'' to hang himself.
Navy Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, the detention camps commander, said Wednesday that the fourth suicide, which occurred soon after he took charge, ``reinforced for us the necessity to be extremely vigilant.''