Twenty-one months later, the military announced that Mr. Ahmed, a Yemeni, and two other prisoners had simultaneously hanged themselves.
Their deaths in June 2006 — the first at Guantánamo — fueled a debate between military officials, who deemed the suicides “an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us” by jihadists seeking martyrdom, and prison critics, who interpreted them as an act of despair by men with little hope of a fair trial or release.
Since then, two other detainees have succeeded in killing themselves — one in 2007, and another in 2009. Against that backdrop, a collection of secret detainee assessment files obtained by The New York Times reveal that the threat of suicide has created a chronic tension at the prison — a tactic frequently discussed by the captives and a constant fear for their captors.
The files for about two dozen detainees refer to suicide attempts or threats. Others mention informants who pass on rumors about which prisoner had volunteered to kill himself next and efforts to organize suicide attempts. Two prisoners were overheard weighing whether it would create enough time for someone to end his life if fellow prisoners blocked their cell windows, distracting guards who would have to remove the obstructions.
While medical officials struggled to keep hunger strikers alive, other officials were on constant alert for signs of trouble. In May 2008, a detainee ordered fellow prisoners to “stop singing that song; we will sing it on Monday when our brothers leave.” His file noted: “It was assessed he meant planning suicide attempts.”
Even stray remarks about suicide could have consequences. When assessing detainees’ risk level, analysts noted whether they were said to have expressed support for suicides — lowering their chances of release.
And both sides were focused on the public-relations implications: one prisoner told others in February 2006 that a detainee’s death would “open the eyes of the world and result in the closure of the base.”
In the early years at the prison, where many detainees experienced mental health problems, suicide attempts were typically described as a medical issue. A Saudi who incurred brain damage after trying to hang himself had been “treated here for depression,” his 2004 assessment noted. The file for another detainee with 12 “serious suicide attempts,” including cutting his throat in December 2005, said he suffered from a “major depressive disorder.”
Over time, though, officials appeared to take a more wary view, the documents suggest. In January 2005, a prisoner tried to hang himself after being placed in a cell next to another detainee he suspected of being an informant. An analyst noted that he “knows how the logistics work” and that “if he ‘attempted suicide’ that he would be moved from his cell and away from” the other detainee.
But the death of Mr. Ahmed and two others in June 2006 was a turning point. It marked the climax of a period of intense mass protests and turmoil, including a failed attempt at a multiple suicide the previous month by several detainees who swallowed prescription drugs they and others had hoarded.
The three deaths have gained particular notoriety among prison critics, with some skeptics even saying that they may have been homicides. The three men’s assessments do not address how they later died.
The records, part of a collection leaked last year to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, show that the men shared a history of hostile, defiant behavior toward their captors, but also that the evidence against them varied widely.
Mr. Ahmed was arrested during a raid on a guesthouse in Pakistan that officials believed had links to Al Qaeda. He said he was a religious student who had never been to Afghanistan. Analysts thought he was lying, his file shows, because several other detainees claimed they had seen him at training camps and with members of Al Qaeda.
The second detainee, a Saudi named Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, was arrested at a Pakistani checkpoint in a taxi with four other men, all hiding under burqas. He said he was a preacher for an Islamic missionary group, an organization officials believed had sometimes helped extremists.
Mr. Utaybi’s file said had been carrying someone else’s passport and made “inconsistent statements.” One of the men arrested with him had been to a terrorist training camp — but two others had already been released. Analysts said he knew little, and recommended sending him to Saudi Arabia for continued detention.
By contrast, the file for the third detainee, a Saudi named Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, said he freely admitted that he went to Afghanistan to be a jihadist fighter. It also said he had laughingly shouted “9/11 you not forget” at a prison staff member and told a guard “he would use a knife to cut his stomach open, cut his face off, and then drink his blood, smiling and laughing as he said it.”
Several later assessments of other detainees make references to the three suicides. One such file, for example, mentions in passing that a prisoner reported that another detainee had told him “he had been approached and recruited by the three detainees who had committed suicide.”
And Mr. Ahmed’s brother, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, who was also a detainee until his repatriation in 2009, wrote to a family member depicting Mr. Ahmed “as a martyr,” according to an assessment. An analyst concluded that both brothers “viewed the suicide as a continuance of their jihad against the US.”
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York.
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