Reprieve Responds to Death of Prisoner in Guantanamo Bay
31.05.07
o Unnamed prisoner found dead at 1pm yesterday (6pm GMT)
o Reprieve expresses concern for British families
o Reprieve calls for the urgent closure of the prison
At 1pm on May 30th 2007, another prisoner was found dead in Guantánamo Bay. The U.S. military (SouthCom) refused to identify the cause of death, but indicated that the prisoner appeared to have taken his own life and was of Saudi origin.
Hearing the news, the wife and four children of British resident Shaker Aamer have expressed particular concern. Mr. Aamer, who is of Saudi origin, has been held in total isolation for longer than any other prisoner in Guantánamo – since September 24, 2005. He began a hunger strike in December 2006, and has been refusing food for more than 150 days.
Clive Stafford Smith, Legal Director of Reprieve, said:
“Releasing this information without a name has caused immense distress to the families of the Saudi prisoners who continue to be held without trial in Guantánamo. The U.S. military will not tell us who died, so we can only hope it is not Shaker. The last time I saw him he was incredibly depressed. He has lost half his body weight while in prison.”
Stafford Smith continued: “After more than five years without any charges, the prisoners in Guantánamo are becoming increasingly desperate. Reprieve has warned the U.S. military time and again that more suicides are inevitable under such conditions, but they remain frozen in a nightmare of their own creation. And despite our repeated appeals for intervention on Shaker’s behalf, the British government have continued to sit on their hands – failing both Shaker and his young British family who have now spent over five years without a father. Guantánamo must be closed immediately. There is enough blood on everyone’s hands.”
Shaker Aamer himself previously issued a statement, unclassified by the U.S. military censors, about his decision to protest through hunger striking:
“I am dying here every day, mentally and physically. This is happening to all of us. We have been ignored, locked up in the middle of the ocean for years. Rather than humiliate myself, having to beg for water, I would rather hurry up the process [of dying] that is going to happen anyway.
“What is the point of my wife being British?” Mr. Aamer continued. “I thought Britain stood for justice, but they … abandoned us [British residents], people who have lived in Britain for years, and who have British wives and children. I hold the British government responsible for my death, as I do the Americans.”
The unnamed man is the fourth person to have taken his own life in Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve lawyers Zachary Katznelson and Clive Stafford Smith represent 37 prisoners in Guantanamo, including three originally from Saudi Arabia: British resident Shaker Aamer, who is married to a British citizen and has four British children, Mohammed El Gharani, who was only 15 years old when he was seized in a mosque in Pakistan, and Ayman Al Shurafa, who has been cleared for release for at least four months by the United States military, yet continues to sit in a solitary confinement cell in Guantanamo.
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