A Reflection on Salah, Mani and Yasser

Witness Against Torture Reflects on “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides’: A Camp Delta Sergeant Blows the Whistle,” by Scott Horton (Harper's March 2010 cover story)

We learned of the deaths of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani at Guantanamo as we prepared for a big birthday celebration for Daniel Berrigan’s 85th in New York City. It was June 9, 2006.

We were saddened and outraged, but not really surprised. With the men at Guantanamo on hunger strike for more than a year at that time, we thought it was simply a matter of time until one or more men would succeed in ending their indefinite detention through death…if they were kept from appealing for justice. The military reported the three deaths as suicides.

We opened our circle of celebration for a man known for his peace making, his poetry and his persistence, to include mourning too—we brought Salah, Mani and Yasser and their families into the circle.

Later, as we spoke with lawyers from Center for Constitutional Rights, we learned that there were questions about the circumstance surrounding the deaths of these men. We learned that their families never accepted these deaths as suicides.

We were saddened and outraged, but - again - not shocked, by the callous response from the U.S. authorities at Guantanamo. Rear Admiral Harry Harris was quoted as saying “They are smart. They are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare.”

Yasser’s mother recalls that he “used to sing children’s songs to make us laugh.” Yasser was only seventeen when he was taken to Guantanamo. Mani had been cleared for release from Guantanamo, and was scheduled to be moved to a detention facility in Saudi Arabia, his home country. Salah was a devoted Muslim and had memorized the whole Koran. His father says “he was committed to his religion…”

Parents and lawyers had suspicions; they launched investigations and demanded answers. But they got nowhere. Now—almost four years later—a whistleblower has stepped forward and he is filling in pieces of the puzzle. His name is Joe Hickman, originally from Baltimore. He was 19 when he joined the Marines in 1983. In 2006, he was serving as a sergeant of the guard for Camp America’s exterior security force at Guantanamo.

Scott Horton interviewed him for “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides’: A Camp Delta Sergeant Blows the Whistle,” a Harper’s Magazine article published January 18, 2010. In the article, Horton writes that on the night the three men died: “Hickman headed to the clinic, which appeared to be the center of activity, to learn the reason for the commotion. He asked a distraught medical corpsman what had happened. She said three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic. Hickman recalled her saying that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised.”

Scott Horton calls into question the official account of the deaths of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani—characterized by the U.S. military authorities as suicides— that occurred there on June 9, 2006.

Witness Against Torture has been working since 2005 for the closure of Guantanamo, an end to torture, justice for the victims and accountability for the perpetrators. In this work, we have tried to learn the names of the men there and to tell their stories.

On June 26, 2006, the UN Day for Victims of Torture, we gathered at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, and twenty five people were arrested for kneeling and praying in front of the building. Three—Felton Davis, Carmen Trotta and Matt Daloisio—were arrested without identification, giving the arresting officers the names Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani. They were held overnight, and released after seeing a judge the next day.

It was the first time the names Salah, Mani and Yasser were uttered in a U.S. court of law. Matt wrote of the experience that two things helped him remain hopeful: “people knew I was there. My wife Amanda, my community, all my friends knew where I was and I was confident that I would not be forgotten. I also knew that I would get out. I wasn’t sure if it would be twenty-four, forty-eight or seventy-two hours, but I knew that I would surely be out that week. These two things made it possible to endure a situation which many of the poor of our city endure repeatedly, and which hundreds of men at Guantanamo have endured for over four years.... God help us.”

Right now, more than 150 people are participating in a Fast for Justice organized by Witness Against Torture. In the United States and throughout the world, people are on Day Nine of a Twelve Day, liquid-only fast. The Fast began on January 11—the date in 2002 when Guantanamo opened to “war on terror” detainees. It will end on January 22—the Obama administration's widely proclaimed, and now-voided, deadline for closing Guantanamo. Over 50 of those participating in the “Fast for Justice” are in Washington, DC, and have been lobbying and vigiling every day, calling for Guantanamo’s closure.

The week after the deaths at Guantanamo in 2006, we organized a simple vigil with a few people. Our three handmade signs read: We mourn the death of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami. We mourn the death of Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi. We mourn the death of Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani.

In the years that followed, we have carried the names and stories of the men in Guantanamo, and we have carried these signs with us. This evening, in preparation for our vigil tomorrow, the lines that form the words on them were carefully and somberly re-traced, their names and our message made a bit bolder.

Tomorrow, we go to the Pentagon for a morning vigil and the White House in the last afternoon. We will hold the names Salah, Mani and Yasser close as we act tomorrow, as we walk through Day Nine of our fast.

Read Scott Horton’s incredible article, The Guantánamo ‘Suicides’: A Camp Delta Sergeant Blows the Whistle,” online at http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368