On Sunday, three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide by hanging themselves using make-shift nooses from clothing and bedsheets. What follows are a collection of quotes in response to the revelations.

“He also stressed that it was important to treat the bodies humanely and with cultural sensitivity.”
- White House Spokesman Tony Snow describing US President George Bush’s reaction

“He wants to make sure that this thing is done right from all points of view.”
White House Spokesman Tony Snow describing US President George Bush’s reaction

“It does sound like this is part of a strategy - in that they don’t value their own lives, and they certainly don’t value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic. Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move.”
- Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy

“They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”
- Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris

“They’re determined, intelligent, committed and they continue to do everything they can to become martyrs in the jihad.”
- General John Craddock, commander of the Miami-based Southern Command, US

“This may be an attempt to influence the judicial proceedings in that perspective.”
- General John Craddock, referring to the upcoming Hamden case to determine “whether detainees at Guantánamo may be tried as war criminals before military commissions and whether they may challenge their detentions in federal courts.”

“I wouldn’t characterise it as a good PR move. What I would say is that we are always concerned when someone takes his own life. Because as Americans, we value life, even the lives of violent terrorists who are captured waging war against our country.”
- US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Detainee Affairs Cully Stimson

“Those people have to be tried. There are tribunals established. Where we have evidence they ought to be tried, and if convicted they ought to be sentenced”.
- Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee

“They should as quickly as possible try to close the facility. There has to be a good procedure that balances the need to keep these people off the street with the need to find out who in fact is a terrorist. That hasn’t been done yet by the administration.”
- Senate Democrat Jack Reed

“I think it would be to the benefit of our cause, and our fight for freedom and for democracy, if the facilities at Guantánamo were closed down.”
- Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen

“It shows the importance of letting the prisoners free or giving them a statutory trial.”
- Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson

“Each Saudi has to be brought home where he can face up to charges he is accused of based on our laws and regulations.”
Saudi Interior Ministry

“It is breathtaking to hear an official spokesman describe it in such a way.”
- Michael Moore, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs

“I wouldn’t want to be associated in the same six inches of newsprint as the disgusting and disgraceful comments (of Colleen Graffy). These men had been held without trial and tortured for years. The world will judge Colleen Graffy by her comments.”
- UK Respect MP, George Galloway

“There is no hope in Guantanamo. The only thing that goes through your mind day after day is how to get justice or how to kill yourself. It is the despair - not the thought of martyrdom - that consumes you there. Killing yourself is not something that is looked at lightly in Islam, but if you’re told day after day by the Americans that you’re never going to go home or you’re put into isolation, these acts are committed simply out of desperation and loss of hope. This was not done as an act of martyrdom, warfare or anything else.”
- Shafiq Rasul, former Guantanamo Bay prisoner

“The Americans know that this situation considerably undermines their authority in the world. It is up to the EU to help them find a diplomatic exit for closing down the camp. The suicides express the despair of the people, some of them innocent, imprisoned for up to four-and-a-half years without having the least idea of the length of their ’sentence’ and without being able to defend themselves before a judge. The standard US response — that they will be freed when the war on terrorism is over — is the height of cynicism.”
- Manfred Nowak, United Nations rapporteur on torture

“A stench of despair hangs over Guantanamo. Everyone is shutting down and quitting.”
- Mark Denbeaux, law professor at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, US

“We don’t know what has happened. What we do know and we should say more often is that Guantanamo has to be closed. This is an occasion to reiterate this statement.”
- Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU Commissioner for External Relations

“The families don’t believe it, and of course I don’t believe it either. A crime was committed here and the U.S. authorities are responsible.”
- Lawyer Kateb al Shimri, representing Saudi relatives of prisoners held at Guantanamo

“I have informed their families and they do not believe that they have committed suicide and consider them martyrs. We have great doubts over the US version of the story because they were being held in extraordinary circumstances and were under 24-hour surveillance.”
- Saudi lawyer Kateb al-Shimmari

“There are no independent monitors at the detention camp so it is easy to pin the crime on the prisoners, given that it’s possible they were tortured.”
- Mufleh al-Qahtani, deputy director, state-sponosred Saudi Human Rights Group

“Even if the suicide story is true, I have no doubts that they were pushed to it by torture and the lack of attention paid to the health of the detainees.”
- Saleh al-Khathlan, Saudi human rights group

“They were killed; they were murdered. This was no suicide. There are no guarantees that my son won’t be next. These people (U.S. officials) can’t be trusted. They treat their dogs better than they treat our sons.”
- Lulua al Dakheel, mother of Guantanamo prisoner Fahed al Fouzan

“It’s very clear that any human being who is kept in indefinite detention over four years, not given any kind of hearing, and whose life and fate is subject to such uncertainty, inevitably will contemplate suicide, and the fact that three of them finally succeeded comes as no surprise. This is not an act of warfare, it is a consequence of inhumane and immoral treatment of human beings by the United States.”
- Gitanjali Gutierrez, lawyer, Centre for Constitutional Rights, New York

“The total, intractable unwillingness of the Bush administration to provide any meaningful justice for these men is what is at the heart of these tragedies. We all had the sense that these men were getting more and more hopeless. There’s been a general sense of desperation that’s been growing.”
- Bill Goodman, legal director, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York

“This is the sort of statement that SS officers in Nazi Germany would have been envious of.”
- Massoud Shadjareh, Islamic Human Rights Commission, UK

“The deaths of these three people was not an act of war, it was an act of desperation.”
- Inayat Bunglawala, Muslim Council of Britain

“If it is perfectly legal and there is nothing going wrong there, why don’t they have it in America? It is in a legal no man’s land. Either it should be moved to America and then they can hold those people under the American justice system or it should be closed.”
- UK Constitutional Affairs Minister Harriet Harman

“Obviously, this is a very sad event.”
- Unnamed spokeswoman for Britain’s Foreign Office

“However, just the knowledge and hearing that these three people have committed suicide - I expected it was going to happen at some point because there have been so many attempts, and yet still I was very saddened, very dismayed and very angered actually, that this has taken place.

Because I think the United States has tried so often in trying to keep people alive in some ways ,some very harsh methods they’d used, including force feeding through tubes when people have been on hunger strike.

So I wonder after an investigation, what really has happened and perhaps we’ll find out in the coming days.

[…]

And I think part of it is just a sheer desperation. I think the United States response has been that this has been some sort of asymmetrical act of war which is utter nonsense.

The reality is that people when they are in prison, even when they’ve been convicted of crimes, resort to suicide. So can you imagine if someone hasn’t even had the opportunity to defend themselves in court or who had any access to the legal norms that we would understand or any meaningful communication - that they’re completely and utterly desperate and there’s no access or recourse to law or justice.

[…]

As far as I understand it the Islamic people who come from this sort of an ideology would never justify it from this point of view. I think it’s sheer and utter desperation.

When you’re talking about suicide through suicide bombings or whatever, people may agree or disagree with it. But I think that’s a completely different thing and I think trying to equate that to being an act of war is ludicrous.

I think it doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s just sheer act of desperation and I think that when you’re in that position, you can understand what it’s like when you’ve had no communication with your family for years on end and you don’t know when there’s any light of this so called black tunnel.

You don’t like waking up every day. Every day is every week that turns into a month, turns into a year. You just don’t want to wake up sometimes.

- Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo Bay prisoner

“These people are despairing because they are being held lawlessly. There’s no end in sight. They’re not being brought before any independent judges. They’re not being charged and convicted for any crime.”
- Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch, New York

“The news that three detainees in Guantanamo have died as a result of apparent suicide is a further tragic reminder that the USA must end the lawlessness of the facility. There have been numerous suicide attempts in the detention camp. These are apparently the first that have been successful.”
- Amnesty International, UK

Classical Islamic scholars will tell you that the Koran clearly forbids suicide. But in radical, twisted Wahabbist ideology that delineates the behavior of modern Islamofascist terrorists, the terror-imams have taught that suicide can be considered as a form of martyrdom, particularly if carried out against the infidel and to support jihad. It is precisely for this reason that the terrorist leaders held in the Guantanamo Bay detention center have urged some of their acolytes to commit suicide.

[…]

Yes, these men are confined, but no, the conditions are not unduly harsh, nor do these men suffer torture or abuse. Gitmo is a necessary battleground in the War on Terror. Our options and those of our allies are limited: execute them out of hand, release them unconditionally, or hold them pending future resolution.

As the combatant status reviews, the annual review boards, and the military commissions proceed â?? albeit at a snailâ??s pace due to external legal maneuvering â?? their status will ultimately be resolved. Until that time it is completely necessary for national security that they be held where they cannot harm innocents. And the best facility for accomplishing that mission is Guantanamo Bay.
- Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu, FrontPage Magazine