http://archive.gulfnews.com/region/Bahrain/10127994.html
05/26/2007 11:40 PM | By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
Manama: The US authorities are exerting psychological pressure on Juma Al Dossari, a Bahraini detained at Guantanamo Bay who attempted to kill himself 13 times, by placing him near a man who thinks he is Jesus Christ and another man who spends most of his time yelling incoherently, his lawyer has said.
“[Al Dossari] is being held in horrific conditions at Guantanamo’s Mental Heath Unit [MHU] as he has been for over a year. At MHU, Juma has almost no opportunities for meaningful human interaction,” Joshua Colangelo-Bryan said.
http://archive.gulfnews.com/region/Bahrain/10127994.html
05/26/2007 11:40 PM | By Habib Toumi, Bureau Chief
Manama: The US authorities are exerting psychological pressure on Juma Al Dossari, a Bahraini detained at Guantanamo Bay who attempted to kill himself 13 times, by placing him near a man who thinks he is Jesus Christ and another man who spends most of his time yelling incoherently, his lawyer has said.
“[Al Dossari] is being held in horrific conditions at Guantanamo’s Mental Heath Unit [MHU] as he has been for over a year. At MHU, Juma has almost no opportunities for meaningful human interaction,” Joshua Colangelo-Bryan said.
“[Of the] detainees at MHU, one of these is a Yemeni who claims to be Jesus Christ. Another is an Algerian who, evidently, has a piece of shrapnel in his head, which has caused mental damage. [Al Dossari] said this detainee is missing a part of his skull where the shrapnel entered.
Security overhaul
“This man spends much of the time naked and yelling incoherently. At times, he has walked for days in his tiny cell without stopping,” the lawyer said in a statement relayed to Gulf News by Bahraini rights activist Nabeel Rajab.
The third detainee at MHU appears to be sane but Al Dossari has great difficulty talking to him because he is often held at the opposite end of the detention block and has hearing problems.
Last week, Harry Harris, the prison’s outgoing commander famous for describing three suicides last June as acts of “asymmetric warfare” meant to garner publicity and undermine the United States, said security had been overhauled with the opening of a modern jail where detainees are kept alone in solid-wall cells for 22 hours a day. Lawyers and activists have decried the harsher measures.
“[Al Dossari] spends 22 to 24 hours a day alone in his solid-wall cell. Often he has to listen to the Yemeni and Algerian detainees yelling because they are held near him. In his cell, [Al Dossari] is not allowed to have anything to occupy his mind other than a Quran and – at times – a second book.
“When [Al Dossari] is permitted to have exercise it is alone in a cage. The military often places either the Yemeni or the Algerian in the adjacent cage, which means that [he] has to listen to incoherent shouting even during exercise,” Colangelo-Bryan said.
“[Al Dossari] is a man whom Guantanamo psychiatrists have described as ‘very social’, yet he is deprived of meaningful human interaction and subjected consistently to delusional ranting,” he said.