29/06/2006
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, June 28 (UPI) -- The news of the reported suicides of two Saudi inmates at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay facility is still reverberating in Saudi Arabia amid growing scepticism. Saudi daily Okaz Wednesday quoted Saleh Khalil Suleimani as saying that his brother Youssef, who was recently freed from five years of prison in Guantanamo and returned home, told him that the guards removed the prisoners from their cells two days before the news of the presumed suicides of the two Saudis and a Yemeni prisoner was made public. "The two Saudi prisoners were behaving normally," Suleimani quoted his brother as saying, casting doubt on the U.S. story suicide as the cause of death in all three cases. The Saudi inmates, Maneh Oteibi and Yasser Zahrani, and the Yemeni Ali Abdullah Ahmed were found dead in their cells on June 10. The lawyer of the families of Saudi prisoners in Guantanamo, Kateb Shumari, raised questions about the credibility of the U.S. explanation of suicide as the cause of death of the three inmates. Suleimani also quoted his brother as saying that "a new bunch of Saudi prisoners are being prepared to be repatriated, according to information by prison guards." Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said last week that the kingdom was given 13 inmates by the U.S. authorities in Guantanamo, stressing that efforts are continuing to free the remaining Saudi prisoners. Some 310 inmates have been freed from Guantanamo so far and handed to their governments, including Germany, Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden and Uganda, as reported in a U.S. official statement.
SOURCE: UPI
|
