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Terror detainees
"depressed, suicidal"
Foreign terror suspects
being held without charge in what critics have dubbed "Britain's
Guantanamo" are severely depressed and often suicidal, doctors who
have examined them say. Several have cut themselves and one has
tried to hang himself in the years since they were arrested in the
wake of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
The prison doctors caring for them in London's Belmarsh jail are in
no position to stop the deterioration in their health, the panel of
eight leading psychiatrists and psychologists said on Wednesday.
"For the Belmarsh detainees, a price is being paid in terms of
damaged health," forensic psychiatrist Dr James MacKeith told a news
conference.
The government responded by saying all prisoners at Belmarsh were
given 24-hour healthcare by a 10-strong team of psychiatrists,
nurses and counsellors.
It said Britain's powerful anti-terror laws "are a vital weapon in
our armoury against suspected foreign terrorists posing a threat to
national security ... These powers have been used proportionately
and only in a small number of cases," the Home Office said.
Eleven men, all Muslims, are being held under emergency British laws
which allow police to hold foreigners without trial if they suspect
they are involved in terrorism.
One has been freed from prison and placed under strict house arrest
after an immigration commission ruled his detention without charge
had driven him insane.
The psychiatrists assessed eight detainees -- from Algeria, Tunisia
and Gaza -- over a period of 2-1/2 years at the request of their
lawyers. All were seen by more than one clinician or on more than
one occasion.
The panel found that all eight prisoners "suffer from significant
levels of depression and anxiety".
"The symptoms are of clinical severity and have shown a
deterioration over time," they said in a joint report.
"There is a strong consensus that indefinite detention per se is
directly linked to deterioration in mental health and that
fluctuations in mental state are related to the prison regime."
Civil rights campaigners liken the detainees' situation to those at
the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 600 people
have been held without charge or access to lawyers, some for more
than two years, amid accusations of torture and abuse.
Source:
Reuters
13 October 2004
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