Dead Guantanamo prisoner had U.S. military training

MIAMI (Reuters) - The Guantanamo prisoner who died in his cell this week was a Saudi army veteran who trained with U.S. soldiers before going to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan, military records show.

The man, described by the U.S. military on Thursday as a mid-level al Qaeda operative, apparently committed suicide on Wednesday at the prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Saudi Arabian government identified him as Abdul-Rahman bin Ma'ada bin Dhafer al Aameri and said it had begun procedures to bring home his body.

"A team of Saudi specialists has started, upon an invitation from the American side, a visit to the Guantanamo detention (center) to review the conditions on the Saudi detainees and intensify the effort to repatriate them as soon as possible," the state-run Saudi Press Agency said.

A guard found the man lifeless in his cell and camp officials were unable to revive him, said a spokesman for the U.S. military's Southern Command, Jose Ruiz.

He was the fourth detainee to die in an apparent suicide at the camp, which holds about 380 captives. Another 395 detainees have been released or transferred to other governments since the camp opened in January 2002.

Last June, two Saudis and a Yemeni simultaneously hanged themselves with clothing and bedding in their cells.

All four deaths are under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

There were no other suicide attempts at the camp on Wednesday, Ruiz said.

U.S. military documents give a slightly different spelling of al Aameri's name, a common occurrence when Arabic names are transliterated into English.

According to records previously released by the U.S. military, al Aameri told his captors he was trained by Americans during the nine years and four months he served in the Saudi army.

ANSWERS JIHAD CALL

He said he went to Afghanistan six months after leaving the army because he felt it was his duty to fight jihad, or holy war, when asked by a Muslim government, in this case the Taliban. But he denied he intended to fight Americans.

"Had his desire been to fight and kill Americans, he could have done that while he was side by side with them in Saudi Arabia," he said through a U.S. military officer assigned as his representative before an administrative panel that classified him as an "unlawful enemy combatant."

Al Aameri said he had seen Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda figures from a distance in Afghanistan and admitted carrying an AK-47 assault rifle at the rear of the battle lines in Tora Bora while trying to flee to Pakistan.

The Southern Command said in a statement al Aameri had fought on the front lines north of Kabul and engaged in combat with U.S. forces in Tora Bora in November 2001.

He became a mid-level al Qaeda operative with direct ties to higher-level members during his time in Afghanistan and had met with bin Laden, it said. He had links with bin Laden's bodyguards and al Qaeda recruiters and also ran al Qaeda safe houses, the command said.

Al Aameri had been held in one of two maximum-security buildings at Guantanamo where detainees live in one-man cells with long narrow windows, concrete walls and built-in slabs topped with a mattress.

Human rights groups have long condemned the United States for holding prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo.

They cited Wednesday's death as a sign that captives were being driven to despair by isolation and sensory deprivation in the maximum-security camps and uncertainty over their fates.

"This is inconsistent with American values and must stop immediately," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The U.S. military said the Guantanamo prisoners are terrorists who must be locked up to safeguard Americans.

"We regret any loss of life at the camp and we're going to do whatever we can to prevent something like this from happening again," Ruiz said.