Guantanamo suicides

I mark the 16th anniversary of the deaths of three men at Guantánamo, and revisit the implausibility of the official narrative, which is that they committed suicide. This is an act of remembrance that I engage in every year, and this year I include new information about the events of that particular night that was provided by former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi in his memoir ‘Don’t Forget Us Here,’ published last summer.

The video of “Life After Guantánamo,” an online discussion between myself and former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi, hosted by the Justice for Muslims Collective, which took place last week, and was intended primarily as a fundraiser for Mansoor. We discussed resistance at Guantánamo, the deaths of prisoners, art classes, and how the “taint” of Guantánamo haunts former prisoners, and is an ongoing part of the dehumanization process established at the prison nearly 20 years ago. It is also an injustice that I hope to address through establishing a new organization aimed at removing the “enemy combatant” stigma, and, ultimately, holding the US to account for the fundamental lawlessness of Guantánamo.

Promoting my live interview, this Thursday, Dec. 9, on Zoom, with former Guantánamo prisoner and author Mansoor Adayfi, whose compelling memoir “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo” was published in August.

My review of “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo,” former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi’s riveting account of his 14 years in the prison, much of which was spent in fierce resistance to the injustice and brutality of everyday life in this fundamentally lawless facility. While the subject matter is bleak, Mansoor somehow never loses touch with his hope, his sense of humor and his humanity.

My article marking the 15th anniversary of the death at Guantánamo of three prisoners — all long-term hunger strikers and fiercely resistant to the brutal lawlessness of the prison — who, according to the US authorities, died in a “suicide pact,” although that explanation has been robustly challenged on several occasions in the intervening years.

Marking the anniversary of a sequence of deaths at Guantánamo that I have long described as the “season of death,” when, between May 30 and June 9, in 2006, 2007 and 2009, five prisoners died. They were all suicides, according to the authorities, but all five were long-term hunger strikers, who resisted the brutality and illegality of their confinement, and were not, therefore, obvious candidates for suicide, and many valid accounts have been put forward challenging the official stories.

On the 13th anniversary of three deaths at Guantánamo, contentiously described by the US authorities as suicides, I revisit that terrible night, remembering the men, and recalling the robust challenges that have been made over the years to the official narrative – that the men died by committing suicide.

A cross-post, with my introduction, of a detailed and important article by investigative journalist Jeffrey Kaye about the death at Guantánamo, in 2011, of Haji Naseem, a mentally troubled Afghan national, who was one of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo, in 2007.

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.   Today, as we approach a terrible milestone in Guantánamo’s history — the 6,000th day of the prison’s existence, this […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.   Just over ten years ago, on May 1, 2008, one of the better-known prisoners at Guantánamo, the Al-Jazeera cameraman […]