[citation needed] On June 10, 2006, DOD reported that three Guantanamo detainees: two Saudis and one Yemeni, had committed suicide.
The dead Saudis were identified as Yasser Talal Al Zahrani and Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi.
At the time, The Washington Post'' reported that DOD alleged Ahmed: "was a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative who had key ties to principal facilitators and senior members of the group.
The journalist Josh White found the following about Ahmed in a "previously secret" document: Although many of the individuals apprehended during the raid have strong connections to al Qaeda, there is no credible information to suggest Ahmed received terrorist related training or is a member of the al Qaeda network.
Some family members had expressed concerns when the bodies were missing the brain, liver, kidney, heart and other organs.
Patrice Mangin, the Swiss pathologist who headed the team that volunteered to examine Al Salami's body, said that it was routine to remove some organs that decay rapidly.
[16] But, Mangin said that the US authorities had kept the organs of Al-Salami's throat, which was unusual, and his team could not determine fully whether he had hanged himself without being able to examine those.
[17] In 2005, attorneys had initiated a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Ali Abdullah Ahmed to challenge the government for the cause of his detention.
They argued that the Department of Defense had withheld important information about Ahmed to substantiate its claim that he committed suicide.
On August 23, 2008, Josh White, writing in the Washington Post, reported the paper had received 3,000 pages of documents related to the NCIS investigation through Freedom of Information Act requests.
It quoted from what it claimed was Ahmed's suicide note: I am informing you that I gave away the precious thing that I have in which it became very cheap, which is my own self, to lift up the oppression that is upon us through the American Government.
I did not like the tube in my mouth, now go ahead and accept the rope in my neck.The Post quoted the reaction of David Englehart, al-Salami's attorney, to the documents' release:[3] It's simply astounding that it took the government over two years to conclude a so-called investigation of three men who died in a small cage under the government's exclusive control.
[19] In December 2009, the Obama administration argued that the petitions of the late detainees should be quashed, because their CSRTs had determined that they were "enemy combatants".
On January 18, 2010, Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine published an article denouncing the deaths of Al-Salami, Al-Utaybi and Al-Zahrani as accidental manslaughter during a torture session at a black site, and the official account as a cover-up.