Death Comes To Guantanamo

By Adam Zagorin, RICHARD CORLISS

If the Bush Administration had a wish list for its war on terrorism, the eradication of Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi would surely have been toward the top. But somewhere on that list would also be no deaths in Gitmo. In its 4 1/2 years as a detention center for some 750 men the U.S. has held as terrorist suspects, Camp Delta on Cuba's Guantanamo Bay has been the scene of at least 41 suicide attempts, according to U.S. officials. None were successful until Saturday, when the U.S. Southern Command reported that three men had hanged themselves. After a few sweet days during which the White House could savor the accomplishment of the al-Zarqawi killing, the word from Gitmo introduced a bitter taste.

The three men, two Saudis and a Yemeni, whose names were not immediately released, hanged themselves "with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bedsheets," Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris told reporters in a conference call from the U.S. base. The first death was discovered shortly after midnight on Friday, the other two soon after. All three men left suicide notes written in Arabic. Harris said he believed the acts were coordinated, in part because of the similar method of the deaths and because in the past the three had gone on hunger strikes--acts of defiance that at times involved up to 130 of the detainees.

President George W. Bush expressed "serious concern" about the deaths and directed that the remains be "treated humanely and with cultural sensitivity" in accordance with Muslim traditions, Press Secretary Tony Snow said. "He wants to make sure that this thing is done right from all points of view."

Governments hostile to the U.S.and friendly ones toohave condemned the Administration's detention of the prisoners, few of whom have even been charged with specific crimes. The incarcerations have reverberated violently throughout the Muslim world. A year ago, unsubstantiated news accounts that Korans had been flushed down toilets sparked riots and several deaths. More outrage followed the news last month of a melee between Gitmo detainees and guards. Camp authorities said the fighting erupted when guards attempted to stop an inmate from apparently committing suicide, but some detainees (speaking through their lawyers) reported that the incident was sparked by a search for contraband in Korans. Those searches, GTMO authorities say, are only carried out by interpreters, detainees or other Muslims, never by guards themselves. Two prisoners tried to commit suicide on May 18 by swallowing antianxiety medication they had managed to hoard.

If there's one thing the Administration and the detainees agree on, it's that the battle over Gitmo takes place on two levels: in the camp, where prisoners stage hunger strikes and attempt suicide, and in the outside world, where reports of alleged mistreatment foment negative international and domestic reaction, which in turn puts pressure on the White House to close down Gitmo.

The Administration has a keen interest in keeping detainees alive, even against their will. Force feeding has long been standard policy for hunger strikes at Gitmo, which first began in 2002. The facility's top physicians have told TIME that prisoners who resist are subjected to what critics call especially forceful methods. According to medical records obtained by TIME, a 20-year-old named Yusuf al-Shehri, jailed since he was 16, was regularly strapped into a specially designed feeding chair that immobilizes the body at the legs, arms, shoulders and head. Then a plastic tube, sometimes as much as 50% bigger than the type commonly used for feeding incapacitated patients, was inserted through his nose and down his throat--a procedure that can trigger nausea, bleeding and diarrhea.

Allegations of prisoner abuse prompted more than 250 medical professionals, none of whom work at Gitmo, to sign an open letter to the British medical journal the Lancet demanding an end to force feeding. They cited the code of ethics of the American Medical Association and the World Medical Association, both of which condemn the force feeding of prisoners as a violation of human dignity. In response, the U.S. could say that keeping prisoners alive is its responsibility, even if drastic measures are required to do so.

It was equally in the prisoners' interests for one of their number to die. In a global jihad in which suicide bombers are cheered as heroes, suicide at Guantanamo could be seen as an act of passive resistance, like the self-immolations of Buddhist monks in the early days of the Vietnam War. The Gitmo deaths may have had religious significance for the men who committed them. Colonel Mike Bumgarner, who oversees the detention camps, said in May that several inmates told him of a "vision, or a dream--implicitly a message from God--that if three detainees die, it will attract enough attention so that they will all get out of Guantanamo."

A former Bush Administration official who has been involved in Guantanamo issues believes the suicides could put a crimp in the international praise Bush has received for his tentative detente with Iran: "It reinforces the perception that he can't play nicely with the world and will stir up the monitoring organizations, which hurts the President abroad." The detainees' deaths are unlikely to become a domestic political liability, the source says, because the American voter assumes "that if they're in Gitmo, they're pretty bad." But the former official adds, "People don't react very well to surprises like this, because it reinforces the notion that a chaotic world has been made more chaotic by the Bush presidency, not less. People say, 'Typical Bush. He creates problems he can't solve.'"

The President says he wants to "empty" the Gitmo facility but can't do so until another country agrees to take the inmates without torturing or freeing them. Yet authorities are currently constructing a new, $30 million prison at Gitmo, where they plan to consolidate many of the camp's maximum- and medium-security inmates. Harris argues the camp will be needed for the foreseeable future.

A more urgent concern is a case on the detainees' legal rights that the Supreme Court is expected to decide by July. That case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, could determine whether prisoners have the right to be charged in U.S. civilian courts. Any decision in favor of the detainees would mean a defeat for the elaborate legal framework the Administration has developed to hold Gitmo detainees and other prisoners without charges--and often without trial--by classifying them as "enemy combatants."

That legal battle may yet be overshadowed by a bloodier confrontation at Gitmo. Word of the suicides will spread quickly through the prison. Leaders among the inmates could decide to ratchet up the pressure by launching more strikes, more fights or perhaps more suicides. Guantanamo is far from Iraq and Afghanistan, but it could become another front in the war on the war on terrorism.

With reporting by Mike Allen, SALLY B. DONNELLY, Mark Thompson/Washington