U S policies blamed for Guantanamo suicides

WASHINGTON, June 12 : Rights advocates today blamed U.S. detention and interrogation policies for the suicides of three detainees at Guantanamo Bay and warned that conditions at the camp would drive more to kill themselves.

The deaths of two Saudi men and a Yemeni were predictable results of indefinite incarceration and interrogation techniques that amount to psychological torture, leading to extreme stress and mental illness, they said.

''The amount of psychological stress that is placed upon detainees cannot be underestimated. They are numb, depressed, desperate. Many of them are suffering extreme psychological effects,'' said Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents more than 170 of the around 460 Guantanamo inmates.

''The deaths this weekend were predictable and inevitable and the United States bears complete and utter responsibility for these deaths,'' she told a news conference.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman rejected criticism of the facility at the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba. ''It is a professionally run, humane detention facility,'' he said.

But rights advocates said the suicides underscored the desperation of detainees held at the prison.

Saudis Manei al-Otaibi and Yasser al-Zahrani, and Yemeni Ali Abdullah Ahmed, hanged themselves with clothes and bedsheets in their cells on Saturday, the first prisoners to die at Guantanamo since the United States began sending suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives there in 2002.

Gutierrez and Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Cambridge, Mass.-based Physicians for Human Rights, called on the Bush administration to allow independent medical examinations for the remaining detainees at Guantanamo. Most of the detainees were captured in Afghanistan.

Rubenstein said Pent agon interrogation techniques such as long-term isolation, sleep deprivation and humiliation have long been known to cause severe depression and anxiety.

''Where we are today is in a situation where we can expect more suicides, where the despair continues,'' he said.

''The interrogation techniques have not changed, and unless we have a significant profound change in due process and interrogation and in the very existence of Guantanamo, we can expect more.''

Reuters