Thursday 19 May 2011 10.27 BST
- Article history
An Afghan prisoner has died at the Guantánamo detention centre in an apparent suicide, the US military has said.
The prisoner was found dead in a recreation yard by guards conducting routine checks at the facility. He was identified as Inayatullah, a 37-year-old accused of being a member of al-Qaida
"An investigation is under way to determine the exact circumstances of what happened," said a Guantánamo Bay spokeswoman, Navy Commander Tamsen Reese.
The US military's southern command said on Wednesday that guards found the detainee unresponsive and not breathing. "After extensive lifesaving measures had been exhausted, the detainee was pronounced dead by a physician."
Inayatullah is the eighth prisoner to die at Guantánamo Bay since the US began sending foreign captives with suspected al-Qaida or Taliban links there in January 2002. Five others have are believed to have killed themselves and two died of natural causes.
Inayatullah was one of the last captives sent to Guantánamo. The last publicly announced detainee arrival was in March 2008.
The military said an investigation would be carried out after a postmortem. Inayatullah's body would then be prepared for repatriation.
Inayatullah had admitted to being a planner for al-Qaida's terrorist operations and helped to coordinate documentation, accommodation and vehicles to smuggle al-Qaida fighters through Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Iraq, the military said.
In March, Barack Obama lifted a two-year freeze on new military trials at Guantánamo Bay and suggested the US Congress was hurting American national security by blocking his attempts to move some trials into US civilian courts.
Obama had tried and failed to overcome objections by Republicans and some fellow Democrats in Congress to transfer some detainees to US prisons.
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