Suicides may be attempt to influence court proceedings, general says

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/14795887.htm

By Carol Rosenberg
Knight Ridder Newspapers

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba - With autopsies and a Navy investigation underway, the U.S. military brought a Muslim chaplain to this remote Pentagon prison Sunday to carry out traditional Islamic burial rites for three war-on-terror captives who hanged themselves in their cells with bed sheets.

Defense attorneys and critics of the prison project blamed despair among the 460 or so captives for the first deaths at this offshore detention center, which opened in January 2002.

But the Pentagon's Southern Command chief visited the prison camps Sunday, and would have none of it.

"I wouldn't want to speak for the detainees. I think that's speculation and that's dangerous," said Army Gen. Bantz Craddock.

He then noted that, with the Supreme Court to decide shortly whether President Bush's war court is constitutional, "this may be an attempt to influence the judicial proceedings in that perspective."

and why did they have bed sheets to hang themselves with...? I thought that prisons were very careful about not providing those type o fmaterials...

to try to get the court to feel sorry for them.

Those terrorists are clever little devils.

Anna Nicole Smith, there's no reason they should have made that a priority.

I can't imagine the despair of these men, to be in a foreign country, held indefinitely by
those who you have nothing in common and do not speak your language, never allowed to see their
family. I do not think that they killed themselves for pr reasons.

that someone is trying to explain away suicides as "PR" is disgusting.

Army Gen. Bantz Craddock is a sick, twisted cookie, and the US military, as an institution and in its current state, deserves no support whatsoever.

to be released, why don't they release them now, I hate the oh, we'd release them if we only
could, and they didn't tell him that he was scheduled to be released, so he killed himself
thinking that there was never a chance it would stop.

and enlisted ranks. I support the enlisted ranks but not any officer above the rank of 1 Lt. They (officers above rank of 1 Lt.) are all war criminals by the standards set at Nuremburg.

Count Four at Nuremburg addresses crimes committed against civilians in occupied countries. There is no distinction based on rank.

of moral culpability, imho. Thus, if PFC Lyndie England was guilty of "dereliction of duty," then BFEE are guilty of crimes against humanity and should be held to account at a War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague.

Wow, first suicide bombings, then homicide bombings, then suicide suicides! Where will it end!?

"I think that's speculation and that's dangerous"

followed by

"this may be an attempt to influence the judicial proceedings in that perspective."

So, it would be dangerous speculation to think these were the last actions of desperately depressed men, but it is reasonable to say they may have killed themselves in an effort to influence the Supreme Court?

I guess the speculation just didn't go in the direction he wanted.

That they were despondent is a pretty good assumption. That they wanted to influece the court is a pretty broad leap.

the prisoners are kept incommunicado. They have no reading material except for the Koran and no electronic media at all. They get no mail nor are allowed to send any. Without the BBC or other shortwave, how could they get Arabic or Farsi language news? The attorneys are also under a gag in discussing any outside events to their clients.
The only way they would know would be if a US serviceman had mercy on them and gave one a clandestine English language newspaper or gave them a synopsis of the international news.
I am sure that enough of the detainees manage to understand English to hear the scuttlebutt around the guards and pass it on in Farsi and Arabic. That would be the only way they could even know that there were any US court cases in consideration.

I had assumed something along those lines too. I know you can't ever be 100% sure that news won't get through, but Gitmo is probably as close to sure as this world offers.

It is also an incredible stretch to think people would commit suicide just to influence a court. I mean, suicide bombing is hard enough to understand, but just to influence a court?

All that being said, depressed people could hope their suicide has some effect on the outside world, but that would be very much secondary to the suicide. Suicide requires a severe sense of despair and hopelessness. I have known more than my share of suicides, and am as sure of that as I am of anything in life.

Goddam garbage-eating assholes. These guys should be on the other side of those bars. For life.