[1] A number of incidents happened after a change in command at the camp in 2003 resulted in an increase in the severity of interrogation techniques used by military and CIA intelligence officers.
[1] On June 10, 2006, the DOD announced that three prisoners held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps had taken their own lives.
In reports published in 2009 and 2010, Seton Hall University Law School's Center for Policy and Research and a joint investigation by Harper's Magazine and NBC News, respectively, strongly criticized the government's account of the 2006 suicides.
Harper's 2010 article, based on accounts by four former Guantanamo guards, asserted that DOD had initiated a cover-up of deaths resulting from torture during interrogation.
In mid-2002 the DOD changed the way they classified suicide attempts, referring to these acts as "self-injurious behavior", one of many terms the Bush administration coined to describe camp events.
Medical experts outside the camp have argued that doctors did not have sufficient understanding of the detainees to make such conclusions about their intentions or motives.
News media reported from interviews with them that some former detainees described despair and numerous attempts among prisoners to take their own lives, in large part because of individuals' belief in their innocence, the harshness of camp conditions, and especially the indefinite confinement and unending uncertainty they faced.
[3] Quotes from ex-detainees: "I was trying to kill myself", said Shah Muhammad, 20, a Pakistani who was captured in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, turned over to American soldiers and flown to Guantánamo in January 2002.
[3] The U.S. government denied claims of prisoner abuse at the time, but on May 9, 2004, The Washington Post publicized classified documents that showed the Pentagon had approved interrogation techniques at Guantánamo including sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme hot and cold, bright lights without relief, and loud music.
[1] Reporters noted that numerous attempted suicides occurred after a change in command at the camp resulted in an increase in the severity of interrogation techniques used against the detainees.
"[2] Colleen Graffy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, called the suicides, "a good PR move"—and, "a tactic to further the jihadi cause".
[9] On June 12, 2006, Cully Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, said: I wouldn't characterize it as a good PR move.
[10]The Scotsman characterized this as an attempt by the Bush administration "... to pull back from the earlier comments about public relations and 'asymmetric warfare'.
[11] Colonel Michael Bumgarner (April 2005 – June 2006), the commander of the camp's guard force, reacted to the suicides by telling his officers soon afterward: "The trust level is gone.
According to Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, a British organization representing numerous detainees: "They think that they are going to find letters from us suggesting suicide.
The United States Department of Defense claimed their deaths at the time as suicides, although their families and the Saudi government argued against the findings.
[23] In 2010, Harper's Weekly and NBC News released the report of a joint investigation, based on accounts by four former Military Intelligence staff, stationed at the time at Guantanamo.
The article written by Scott Horton, a journalist and human rights attorney, suggested the military under the Bush administration had covered up deaths of the detainees that occurred under torture at a "black site" in the course of interrogations.
Mark Denbeaux is a law professor at Seton Hall University and director of its Center for Policy and Research, which had published numerous reports on conditions at Guantanamo.
[36][37] Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald reported his name as Abdul Rahman Ma Ath Thafir Al Amri and that he was a military veteran of the Saudi army.
[39][40] In 2017, FOIA documents on the investigation into the death of Al Amri revealed that he had been found hanging in his cell with his hands tied in a "snug" fashion behind his back.
According to the clerk in charge of the computer logs that tracked detainee movements, Al Amri had been with an interrogator in the hour prior to his death.
Despite the fact that the detainee had not supposedly met with an attorney, documents from the NCIS investigation state there were materials of a confidential attorney-client nature in Al Amri's possession at the time of his death, and these were turned over to the Judge Advocate's Office at Guantanamo.
[43] According to documents released via Freedom of Information Act in 2016, Al Hanashi died by tearing off a piece of elastic underwear and strangling himself to death.
He also complained about being tortured on the day he died, and wrote in a final note that he was very upset when his report was ignored, and said he didn't want to live anymore.
[41] DOD announced that Inayatullah, 37, an Afghan detainee held since 2007 on suspicion of being a member of Al Qaeda, was found dead on May 18, 2011, an apparent suicide.