Background Briefing

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VIII. Suicide Attempts

Shah Mohammed Alikhil told Human Rights Watch that he had made three suicide attempts by hanging at Guantanamo.79  Former detainee Alif Khan, interviewed in Afghanistan, reported:  “Two men next to me went crazy.  They were trying to kill themselves.  All their stuff was taken from the cell except for their underclothes and a shirt so they couldn’t try to strangle themselves again.”80  Former detainee Muhammad Naim Farooq recalled in an interview with Amnesty International that he had “personally seen two cases, one Afghan and one Iranian.  They tried to hang themselves with clothes.  Both survived and were punished with solitary confinement, without clothes.  I could not see for how long.”81



[79] Human Rights Watch interview with Shah Mohammed Alikhil, January 3, 2004.

[80] BBC Panorama, “Inside Guantanamo,” broadcast October 5, 2003. Transcript available online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/insideGuantánamo.txt, accessed on August 19, 2004.

[81] Quoted in Amnesty International, “United States of America: The threat of a bad example,” AMR 51/114/2003, August 19, 2003.


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