06-11-2006, 02:40 PM
Washington, June. 11 (PTI): Three Arab detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Facility committed suicide by hanging in their cells using strips of clothes and bedsheets, making them the first set of prisoners to take their lives since the facility formally opened in 2002.
The Pentagon's Southern Command has said that two nationals of Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen had taken their lives shortly after midnight on Friday. The guards had found the three in their cells not breathing and attempts to revive them failed.
The Guantanamo Bay facility is holding between 450 to 500 detainees suspected of terror-related activities and Pentagon officials have said they had no indication if the suicides were related to the killing of the al Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
Instead, the Camp Commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris has said the suicides were an "asymmetrical warfare" against the US in a "mystical" belief that the deaths would pave the way for the remaining to get away free.
The detention facility has been attracting a lot of attention in the recent past with inmates stepping up their hunger strikes and even clashing with the guards. And it is not the first time that detainees have tried to take their lives.
According to the Pentagon, since 2002, 23 inmates have tried to take their lives a total of 41 times and 29 of these attempts were by hanging. Human rights activists have long criticised the manner in which the 500-odd detainees have been languishing in Guantanamo Bay, most of them with no charges pressed and no recourse to American courts.