Miami Herald on Guantanamo Death and Mental Illness

Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald has this very interesting story about the death that occurred at Guantanamo the other day. There seems to be a much greater dispute about who this detainee really was than about whether he was seriously mentally ill--and well-cared-for at Guantanamo. Carol's story begins:

WASHINGTON -- An Afghan prisoner who died this week at Guantánamo was found hanging by a bed sheet in a prison camp recreation yard and apparently hanged himself, a military spokeswoman said Thursday. Inayatullah, 37, was one of the last captives brought to the controversial camps in southeast Cuba by the Bush administration. He arrived in September 2007, and was described as an Al Qaeda emir in Iran who planned and directed the group’s terror operations. His lawyer, Miami public defender Paul Raskind, countered that the man who died was never known as Inayatullah anywhere but in Guantánamo, never had a role in Al Qaeda and was in fact named Hajji Nassim and ran a cellphone shop in Iran near the Afghan border. Rashkind also acknowledged that his client had a history of psychological problems that the military recognized at Guantánamo. “I have no doubt it was a suicide,” he said by telephone while traveling in St. Louis. The Afghan’s mental health problems became so profound last year that Rashkind arranged to bring a civilian psychiatrist to the base to work with the man. “This is really a sad mental health case ... starting from childhood,” he said. At Guantánamo, “they treated him pretty humanely, I’d have to say.”