A new report reveals that a number of prisoners -- even some long ago cleared to leave -- are spiraling into hallucinations, despair and suicide.
Editor's note: In this article, Jennifer Daskal and Stacy Sullivan report -- in the greatest detail published to date -- on the deteriorating mental health of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The two staff members of the nonprofit group Human Rights Watch produced a new in-depth report published Tuesday by the organization, on which this article is based. They have also contributed to Salon's continuing coverage of U.S. judicial proceedings at Guantánamo Bay.
June 10, 2008 | GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba -- "I feel like I'm being buried alive," said Ahmed Belbacha, a 39-year-old Algerian who has been in Guantánamo since March 2002. He has been cleared to leave the prison camp for over a year, but he can't.
Algeria isn't accepting detainees back home, but even it were, Belbacha is so fearful of being tortured there that he has asked the U.S. federal courts to block his return. But there is no other country willing to take him, and he remains stuck in Guantánamo -- locked in his windowless cell 22 hours a day, with little more than a Koran and single other book to occupy his time.
A new report reveals that a number of prisoners -- even some long ago cleared to leave -- are spiraling into hallucinations, despair and suicide.
Editor's note: In this article, Jennifer Daskal and Stacy Sullivan report -- in the greatest detail published to date -- on the deteriorating mental health of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The two staff members of the nonprofit group Human Rights Watch produced a new in-depth report published Tuesday by the organization, on which this article is based. They have also contributed to Salon's continuing coverage of U.S. judicial proceedings at Guantánamo Bay.
June 10, 2008 | GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba -- "I feel like I'm being buried alive," said Ahmed Belbacha, a 39-year-old Algerian who has been in Guantánamo since March 2002. He has been cleared to leave the prison camp for over a year, but he can't.
Algeria isn't accepting detainees back home, but even it were, Belbacha is so fearful of being tortured there that he has asked the U.S. federal courts to block his return. But there is no other country willing to take him, and he remains stuck in Guantánamo -- locked in his windowless cell 22 hours a day, with little more than a Koran and single other book to occupy his time.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/10/guantanamo_mental/index.htm...