Saudi prisoner kills self at Guantanamo, U.S. says

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Saudi Arabian prisoner died of an apparent suicide at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

"The detainee was found unresponsive and not breathing in his cell by guards. The detainee was pronounced dead by a physician after all lifesaving measures had been exhausted," the U.S. Southern Command in Miami said in a statement.

The military did not indicate how the prisoner died nor release his name.

He is the fourth detainee to die of apparent suicide at the detention camp, which opened in January 2002 and holds about 380 foreign terrorist suspects on the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba.

Three other prisoners -- two Saudis and a Yemeni -- hanged themselves with clothing and bedding in their cells last June and their deaths are still under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

"The remains of the deceased detainee are being treated with the utmost respect. A cultural advisor is assisting the Joint Task Force to ensure that the remains are handled in a culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner," the Southern Command said.

It said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service had begun an investigation.

In Washington, Amnesty International advocacy director Jumana Musa said news of another suicide at the detention camp was not surprising.

"When you look at the conditions that people are in, so many people are in isolation so many people held without any kind of certainty. It's a really extreme result of what's a really extreme situation," she said.

"I don't know how many more indications need to be there that Guantanamo is not a good idea."

The latest death comes eight days after a new commander took over the military task force that runs the controversial detention center. Rear Adm. Mark Buzby took command of the prison camp last week, replacing Rear Adm. Harry Harris, who was new to the job when the previous suicides took place.

The United States has faced persistent criticism over its indefinite detention at Guantanamo of men it considers "unlawful enemy combatants" not entitled to the protections granted prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

It opened the prison camp shortly after the September 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people in 2001, and says the prison is needed to prevent dangerous al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from returning to the battlefield, and to extract information that could help prevent future attacks.

Human rights activists, who have urged Washington to close the prison, denounced the earlier deaths as a sign of desperation while the U.S. military said they were acts of "asymmetrical warfare."

"In the last year, the conditions at Guantanamo have become even more bleak: the military has increasingly held people in solitary confinement and continued to refuse to allow independent psychological evaluations. The United States government is responsible for this man's death and must be held accountable," Wells Dixon, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said in a statement.