Guantanamo prisoner had US military training

MIAMI, June 1 (Reuters) The Guantanamo prisoner who died in his cell this week was a Saudi army veteran who trained with US soldiers in his homeland before going to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan, military records indicated.

He died of apparent suicide on Wednesday at the prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects at the US 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 yesterday.

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

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

Two other Saudis and a Yemeni simultaneously hanged themselves with clothing and bedding in their cells last June 10. All four deaths are under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The latest death did not appear to be part of a coordinated effort, as there were no other suicide attempts at the camp on Wednesday, Ruiz said.

US military documents give a slightly different spelling of his name, a common occurrence when Arabic names are transliterated into English.

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

ANSWERS JIHAD CALL He said 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 US 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 automatic assault rifle at the rear of the battle lines in Tora Bora while trying to flee to Pakistan.

The Southern Command spokesman said the dead man ''was considered to be enough risk to warrant detaining him in Camp 5,'' one of two maximum-security buildings at Guantanamo.

Detainees there live in one-man cells with long narrow windows, bare 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, and cited Wednesday's death as an indication captives are 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 US 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.

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