Sunday, February 06, 2011
(photo: A. Pessin VOA)
Awal Gul, 48, of Afghanistan, has become the seventh detainee to die at Guantánamo Bay since the U.S. began imprisoning foreign nationals at the military base in January 2002.
Gul was held for nine years without being charged or tried for any crime. He reportedly died of a heart attack, though conflicting accounts made it unclear if his death occurred in an exercise yard or in the showers.
The Afghan ran a weapons depot in his home town in eastern Afghanistan, and did business with the Taliban after it took over the government in 1996. But during the U.S.-supported attacks in 2001 that sought the overthrow of the Taliban, Gul claimed to have sided with a pro-American warlord, Hazrat Ali. On Ali’s advice, he turned himself in to Northern Alliance commanders in order to demonstrate that he was no longer involved with the Taliban. Nevertheless, he was handed over to the U.S. authorities and shipped to Guantánamo.
“Awal Gul’s death illustrates too well what Guantánamo has become—a prison where Muslim men are held indefinitely until they die because the president lacks political courage to release or charge them in any forum,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights in a prepared statement.
Three of the previous six deaths at Guantánamo were highly controversial. On June 10, 2006, three Saudi prisoners were found hanging in their separate cells—hands and feet tied and with gags in their mouths. The U.S. military ruled the deaths a group suicide protest. Two of the other deaths were also ruled suicides, while one prisoner, Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, died of cancer on December 30, 2007. Hekmati was known as an anti-Taliban activist, but ended up in U.S. custody anyway.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
CCR and Mr. Awal Gul's Attorneys Respond to his Death at Guantanamo Bay (Center for Constitutional Rights)
Guantanamo Prisoner Dies after Exercising (by Jane Sutton, Reuters)
The Mysterious Deaths of 3 Guantánamo Prisoners (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
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