Another Guantánamo Bay prisoner attempts suicide

Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer for the prisoner, told the Los Angeles Times that the individual is an Algerian man who has been held without charges and without access to a lawyer for almost six years. No additional information has been made available to the media.

The means employed by the prisoner to end his own life underscores the desperation of prisoners who have been systematically isolated, tortured and stripped of their will to live.

Commander Andrew Haynes, the deputy commander of the guard force in Guantánamo Bay, said that there have been four to six incidents of “self harm”—a euphemism for attempted suicide—by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay in the last two months.

Four prisoners have committed suicide in the past year-and-a-half—one in May and three the previous June. The three in June of 2006 hanged themselves with their bed linens. In 2003, there were 350 incidents of “self harm,” including 120 hanging attempts.