Guantanamo inmate death was likely suicide: Swiss forensic expert

Published: Friday March 2, 2007

The death of an inmate at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last June was most likely a suicide, a Swiss forensic medicine expert said on Friday.

However, a lack of cooperation from US authorities left many questions unanswered and made it impossible to reach a firm conclusion, he added.

Professor Patrice Mangin of the University of Lausanne said an autopsy he carried out on the body of Ahmed Ali Abdullah, who had been held in Guantanamo for four years before his death in June 2006, showed marks consistent with asphyxiation.

"This asphyxiation is the result of violence, pressure brought to the neck ... the presence of a lesion is basically consistent with a hanging," Mangin told reporters.

"As to the circumstances of the death ... the theory of suicide is currently consistent with our findings," he said.

However, the unanswered questions include how and in what position the body was discovered, and in what state the prisoner had been prior to his death, Mangin added.

Abdullah, a Yemeni national, was found dead along with two Saudi detainees, Maniy bin Shaman al-Otaibi and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, on June 10, 2006.

A Saudi doctor who carried out autopsies in these cases also met with a lack of cooperation from the US, Mangin said.

US officials aroused outrage by describing the three deaths, the first in Guantanamo since the camp's opening in 2002, as "an act of asymmetric warfare" and "a good PR move."

Alkarama for Human Rights, a Geneva-based Arab non governmental organisation, rejected the suicide theory and commissioned Professor Mangin to carry out a second autopsy.

Group official Rachid Mesli said that the deaths were "extrajudicial executions."

"The lack of response from the US authorities ... strengthens our conviction that this wasn't an act of suicide," he said, adding: "For our part, we're sure that this step was taken at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp," Mesli said.

The Pentagon has rebuffed calls for an outside investigation into the deaths, saying the US military could review the situation itself. US authorities carried out their own autopsy before returning the body to Yemen.

But human rights watchdog Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation as "a matter of absolute urgency".

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