THE GUANTÁNAMO files: as acts of war and despair, suicide rattle a Prison

Twenty-one months later, the army announced that Mr. Ahmed, a Yemeni and two other prisoners were hanged simultaneously themselves.

Death in June, 2006 - the first Guantánamo - fueled a debate among military officials, who held "an act of asymmetric warfare against us" suicides by jihadists seeking martyrdom, and critics of the prison, which was interpreted as an act of desperation by men with little hope of a fair trial or release.

Since then, the other two inmates were able to kill themselves - a in 2007 and another in 2009. In this context, a collection of files of detained secret assessment obtained by the New York Times reveals that the suicide threat has created a chronic tension in the prison - a tactic frequently evoked the captives and a constant fear of their captors.

Files for approximately two dozen detainees to refer to suicide attempts or threats. Others mention informants passing on rumours that prisoner volunteered for suicide then and efforts to organize suicide attempts. Two prisoners have been surprised if it would be enough time for a person at the end of his life if create inmates blocked their cell Windows, diverting of guards who would to remove the obstacles of weighing.

Medical officials struggling to keep the hunger strikers, other officials were in constant alert signs of distress. In May 2008, an inmate ordered inmates to "cease to sing this song;" We will sing Monday when our brothers leave. "His record noted:" was assessed it meant planning of suicide attempts. " ?

Even stray remarks on suicide could have consequences. When evaluating the level of risk of prisoners, analysts noted that they would have expressed their support for suicide - reduce their chances of release.

And both parties have focused on the implications of public relations: a prisoner told others in February 2006 death of a detainee "would open in the eyes of the world and result in the closure of the base.".

In the early years of the prison, where many prisoners have experienced mental health problems, suicide attempts have been generally described as a medical problem. One involved damage to the brain after trying hang Saudi Arabia had been "treated here for depression," said its assessment of 2004. The file for another detainee with 12 "serious suicide attempts", including cutting the throat in December 2005, said that he suffers from "major depressive disorder."

Over time, however, officials seem to to take a view more wary, the documents suggest. In January 2005, a prisoner tried to hang after be placed in a cell with another inmate that he suspected of being an informant. An analyst noted that he "knows how logistics" and that "if he"attempted suicide"would be moved from his cell and outside of" the other detained.

But the death of Mr. Ahmed and two others in June 2006 was a turning point. It marked the culmination of a period of intense multiple protests and mass agitation, including an attempt unsuccessful suicide the previous month by several detainees who swallowed prescription drugs that they and others had hoarded.

Three deaths have acquired a particular reputation among critics of the prison, with some even skeptics say they were homicides. Evaluations of three men do not address how they died later.

Records, part of a collection of leak last year the organisation anti-secrecy WikiLeaks, show that men share a history of hostile behaviour, defiant toward their captors, but also that the evidence against them varies.

Mr. Ahmed was arrested in a raid on a house in Pakistan that officials believed was linked to Al-Qaeda. He was a student religious who had never been Afghanistan. Analysts believed that he was lying, his file shows, because several other detainees alleged that they had seen camps training 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 that he was a preacher for an Islamic missionary group, an organization officials believed had sometimes helped extremists.

Said Mr. Utaybi file someone had been carrying elsewhere is the passport and made "inconsistent statements." One of the men arrested with him was a terrorist training camp - but two others had already been released. Analysts, said he knew little and recommended to send him to Saudi Arabia for continued detention.

However, the file for the third detainee, a Saudi named Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, said that freely, he admitted that he went to Afghanistan to be a jihadi fighter. He said also that he had shouted laughing "9/11 you don't forget" to a member of the staff of the prison, said a guard "it would use a knife to cut open his belly, cutting his face and then drink his blood".smiling and laughing as he said. ?

Several assessments later other inmates are references to three suicides. Such a file, for example, mentions in passing that a prisoner reported that another inmate told him "he had been approached and recruited by three inmates had committed suicide."

And the brother of Mr. Ahmed, Muhammad Yasir Ahmed Taher, who was also a prisoner until his repatriation in 2009, wrote to a member of the family representative Mr. Ahmed as"a martyr", according to an evaluation. One analyst concluded that the two brothers "regarded suicide as a continuation of their jihad against the United States."

Andrew w. Lehren contributed reporting from New York.

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Tunnel helps hundreds of Taliban out of the political wing of the Prison

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - the Taliban staged an escape from prison bold here early Monday, releasing political prisoners at least 476 through a long tunnel, according to the Director, GEN Ghulam Dastagir Mayar.

He said that security authorities had discovered the morning that the prisoners of the political wing of the building had disappeared, and that the authorities had found just the tunnel. "We do not know if the tunnel was dug from the outside or inside the prison," he said.

The Kandahar prison is the largest and most important prison in the South of the Afghanistan, and it is home to Taliban who were captured in Zabul, Oruzgan and Kandahar, including certain Taliban and several lower-level Taliban personalities, according to security working with prison officers.

It was the second time, there was a major break from prison to prison Sariposa in Kandahar. The Taliban orchestrated by the release of 1,200 prisoners, of whom 350 were members of the Taliban, June 13, 2008, directed by an attack on the prison which killed 15 guards.

The break comes at a crucial moment in the struggle of the Taliban in the South of the Afghanistan. Pushed out of their strongholds in the rural areas outside the city, and under the pressure of a large number of NATO troops that have heightened in the villages, they were able to maintain a presence, but nothing close to the dominant role that they had even a year ago.

Bring a large framework of experienced veterans, which many will have their skills in prison, will give the Taliban flexibility leadership and human resources to send fighters in new neighbourhoods where there are less than NATO troops and reinforce their numbers to those closest to Kandahar.

A spokesman for the Taliban to the South and West of the country, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, said that a total of 541 prisoners had escaped and that among them were 106 Taliban commanders. "Now,"they are in shelters, he said."".

In a clever propaganda ploy, the Taliban gave a captivating description of the escape from prison in a statement that they sent to the news media before of any comment by security authorities who were just discovering the tunnel.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in the statement: "we have planned and worked on this during five months, and the tunnel is 360 metres long," he said. "It was very important for us. We have tried to leave no one behind, not even a patient or former political prisoner. ?

"Our Mujahedeen have worked in a very careful manner" as not to be discovered, said Mr Mujahid. The tunnel wound under the control of security outside the prison and a main road.

11 H Sunday, three Taliban prisoners who said were the only ones who knew, "went for a cell to wake up people and each of them directors of the tunnel." The Taliban more were on hand as the prisoners emerged out of the dirt and dust from the tunnel to guide prisoners stunned waiting vehicles. Also on hand were Taliban fighters and suicide bombers in the case where the forces of security woke and there was a struggle.

"Fortunately we do not use them," said Mr Mujahid. "The security forces did not know until the sunrise."

Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar and Alissa j. Rubin in Kabul, in Afghanistan.

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Attorney General of the Egypt in prison Mubarak - Xinhua

(BEIJING, April 22 Xinhuanet.com) - Attorney General of the Egypt, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, plans to move former President Hosni Mubarak in a prison. Forensic authorities will examine health of Mubarak and the possibility of transferring him to the hospital in Torah prison.

Medical experts will ensure that the hospital provides all the medical requirements to transfer Mubarak in prison. The former President was hospitalized after he suffered a heart attack during questioning by prosecutors.

The Attorney General was ordered to hold Mubarak and his two sons for 15 days, 13 April accusing him of using violence against demonstrators during the event.

(Source: cntv .cn)

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The juvenile killers in prison for life are seeking a respite

The boy, Quantel alleged, had spent a part of the morning playing with Pokémon cards. He was in seventh year, and not yet five feet in height.

Mr. Lotts is 25 now, and it is in the high security here prison, serving a sentence of life without possibility of parole for murder.

The mother of the victim, Tammy Lotts, said that she lost two children that day of November in 1999. One was a son, Michael Barton, who was 17 when he died. The other was a stepson, Mr. Lotts.

"I don't feel that he is guilty," she said of Mr. Lotts in his modest apartment living room in St. Louis, emotional growth. "But if it was, it has already been his time." He should be released. Time served. "If they think it's too easy, let someone watch his case".

In the current state of things, however, the Act does give Mr. Lotts no hope to ever come out.

Almost a year earlier, the Supreme Court ruled that the punishment of juvenile offenders to life without possibility of parole violated prohibition of the eighth amendment of punishment cruel and unusual - but for crimes which did not murder only. Decision received about 130 prisoners convicted of crimes such as rape, theft to robbery and kidnapping.

Now the inevitable followed by cases began arriving to the Supreme Court. Last month, the lawyers of the two other prisoners who were 14 when they were involved in the murders filed first petitions urging the judges to extend last decision of the year, Graham v. Florida, all offenders to 13 and 14 years of.

The Supreme Court has been methodically reduced from severe penalties. It prohibits the death penalty for juvenile offenders, the mentally disabled and those recognized guilty of crimes other than murder. The decision of Graham for the first time excluded a category of offenders a sanction other than death.

This progress suggests that should not be long until the judges decide to deal with the question posed in the query. An extension of the decision of Graham to all juvenile offenders would affect about 2,500 prisoners.

Mr. Lotts, a sturdy man with an easy way, said that he was not reconciled with his sentence. "I understand that I deserve punishment," he said. "But to be here for the rest of my life with no chance, I do not think that it is a fair sentence."

A large part of the logic of the decision of Graham and the decision of the Tribunal 2005 the prohibition of the death penalty for juvenile offenders, Roper v. Simmons, does not seem to apply for new cases.

The views of the majority in the two were written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who said adolescents deserve more lenient treatment than adults because they are immature, impulsive, sensitive to pressure from peers and able to change for the better over time. Judge Kennedy added that there is international consensus against juveniles to life without parole sentence, which said, had been "dismissed the world above."

A factor of cuts in the opposite direction. Judge Kennedy relied on what he calls a national consensus against sentencing for crimes which did not murder. Juvenile offenders have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for nonhomicide crimes, he wrote, only 12 States and then very rarely.

It does not appear to be such a consensus against the life sentence parole for young people who take a life. This is perhaps why opponents of the penalty are focused for now on murders committed by very young offenders as Mr. Lotts.

This strategy follows that used by attacking the juvenile death penalty, which eliminated the Supreme Court in two stages, it the prohibition for the less than 16 in 1988 and 18 in 2005.

Kent s. Scheidegger, legal Director of the Justice criminal legal basis, a victims rights group, said that the categorical approaches were erroneous in General and particularly unjustified where murders by young offenders have been involved.

"Since I think Graham is wrong," he said, "extending homicide might be poorly square." "".

"Sharp thresholds by age, where the legal status of a person suddenly changes on some anniversary, are only a rough approximation of correct policy", he added. There are approximately 70 prisoners serving life sentences without parole for murders committed while they were 14 years or less, according to a report by the Equal Initiative of Justice, a law firm representing prisoners and the poor Alabama non-profit.

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Subterranean prison a handful of Gaddafi Panel

Benghazi, Libya Peering in an underground prison, Adil Gnaybor frissonné with fear. Rusty prison bars covered with Earth were now exposed, dug up by rebels who had discovered the secret labyrinth of cells. The space is too small to 5 feet of Gnaybor framework, and a white tube provided the only source of air.

"If I go inside there, perhaps I will die," Gnaybor said, looking at gazes into the hole.

Thousands of Libyans have been arriving here in a complex of magnificent houses known as the bu Katiba El Fadil Omar, where leader Libya of Muammar Gaddafi remained during the visits in this port city. It is here that Gaddafi has also had an underground prison.

The compound is perhaps the most vivid symbol in eastern Libya of the triumph on the Gaddafi regime. Its houses were burned and looted. Graffiti denouncing his regime is therefore on virtually every wall. It was said, "Libya be free."

But in the middle of the faded opulence, Libyan expressed fear that their revolution has been losing ground on two fronts and could be reversed.

For many visitors, the underground dungeons were not only a chilling reminder of the brutality of the Gaddafi Government. They also foreshadows the terror that Gaddafi is able to impose in the future if his forces take the city, the second much more Libya.

"I feel nervous." Look what has happened in Zawiyah and Ras Lanuf, "said Gnaybor, 50, referring to two towns - the first in the West, the second in the east - forces that Gaddafi resumed in the last two days." "Everywhere we lose many people."

Al-Badri, 62 years old who came with her three daughters, said: "I expect anything of Gaddafi." He could bomb Benghazi, same use of chemical weapons. He refused to give his full name, for fear that it would fall if returned Gaddafi.

"What is America waiting for?" he continued. "Until that Gaddafi manages to kill the Libyan people?"

Concerns of Benghazi

Of all the cities who have rebelled against Gaddafi, Libyan Benghazi is more waiting will pay the full made his anger if he maintains his grip on power. Populist revolution three weeks of the Libya was born here, and he managed to reach the threshold of power Gaddafi nexus in the West of the Libya with his brief resumption of Zawiyah, 30 km from the capital, Tripoli.

Benghazi is also the headquarters of the Libyan National Council, a 31-member body which seeks to replace the Gaddafi regime.

In 1996, prisoners estimated 1,200 who had protested Qaddafi rule were killed in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison. Many were Benghazi. These memories of savagery has helped trigger the revolt.

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