Al Dossary attempts suicide again

Manama: Bahraini Guantanamo Bay detainee Juma Al Dossary, 32, tried to commit suicide for the tenth time by pulling stitches out of his arm last week.

Justice Department lawyer Edward H. White wrote that in a letter Al Dossary's attorney, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, that the "Guantanamo staff immediately intervened and that Juma has been treated and is currently in stable condition."

Al Dossary, who has been held at Guantanamo since February 2002, also cut his bicep, the letter said, without giving details.

The prisoner said in a meeting with Colangelo-Bryan on November 11 that "he wanted to kill himself so that he could send a message to the world that conditions at Guantanamo are intolerable," according to declassified notes.

"Juma said the purpose of Guantanamo was to destroy detainees and he has been destroyed," said Colangelo-Bryan.

"He recalls awakening on Monday October 17 in the Naval Hospital; the suicide attempt was on October 15. When he woke up he had two tubes in his mouth to assist him in breathing. He also had a catheter and a heart monitor," the attorney said.

Al Dossary said he had been moved to the detainee hospital after almost a week, where he was told that 70 per cent of his vein had been severed but no nerves had been damaged.

"He had approximately 14 stitches in his arm to close the wound, but several days after he woke up, the area on which surgery had been performed became red and puss began to form in it. A second procedure was performed to clean the wound," the attorney said.

Colangelo-Bryan said that Al Dossary, who has not been charged, has been in isolation for much of the last two years. The military claims that he has regular contact with other prisoners. According to medical officials at the US detention centre in eastern Cuba, Al Dossary had attempted suicide at least nine times in the past.

Recruitment
FBI tracks movements of 'The Closer'

FBI officials say Juma Al Dossary was an Al Qaida recruiter, nicknamed "The Closer" for the role he played in recruiting jihadists.

According to the FBI, Al Dossary first trained with Al Qaida at the age of 16. A chronology of his movements begins in 1989, when he spent three days in the Al Sadiq training camp in Afghanistan.

Six years later, he travelled to Zenica, Bosnia, where he spent time with jihadi group known as Kateebat. A year later, Al Dossary travelled to Baku, Azerbaijan, a logical gateway for fighters bound for the guerrilla struggle in Chechnya.

In mid-1996, Al Dossary surfaced in Kuwait, where he was arrested for suspected involvement in the Khobar Tower bombing. He was released 11 days later. Shortly after, he was arrested in Saudi Arabia on suspicion of involvement in the same bombing and held for seven months.

In 2000, Al Dossary secured a position at the Islamic Centre in Bloomington, Indiana. Al Dossary was in Lackawanna , New York on September 11, 2001. At the end of that month he told his friends there he was leaving to fight with the Taliban.