CAROL WILLIAMS: Well, there have been reports of numerous suicide attempts at Guantanamo. The military contends that these are acts of asymmetrical warfare. That the holy warriors are trying to disgrace the U.S. by taking their own lives and embarrassing the detention facility administrators, but the attorneys, who are the only people who meet and speak with the detainees, contend almost unanimously that there is a level of despair among the prisoners that is insurmountable, that after more than four years that most of them have been there without charges, without access to anybody in the outside world, without communications from their families. They have no idea how long they're going to be there, if they'll ever be released. They're told by the guards that they're going to be there until the war on terror is over. There's very little hope of escaping what are pretty harsh conditions. And I think it's not mutually exclusive that the prisoners either kill themselves out of despair or as a statement against their detention, but clearly, there's some of both.

AMY GOODMAN: Carol Williams, we had a debate on Friday on Democracy Now! with the president of the American Psychological Association and a dissident psychologist, as well as a brigadier general, who is a psychiatrist. The A.M.A., the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association have come out against participation of psychiatrists and doctors at Guantanamo. The A.P.A. has yet to do that, the American Psychological Association. The head of the A.P.A., Dr. Koocher, said that the psychologists are there to minister to the mental health needs of the prisoners. What is your sense of that? Is that possible at this point?

CAROL WILLIAMS: Well, they do have a psych ward that they've added to the prison hospital annex in the last year, I believe, and there are, I believe, eight resident patients there. We've never been able to speak with the psychologists or get any sense from the professionals what their state of mind is. There was one young detainee who had attempted to kill himself, hung himself, and he was in a coma for months, and I believe he has been repatriated to his home country. The psychological state in Guantanamo has to be dire. I mean, you can't lock up people in cages out in the desert-like barren wasteland of Guantanamo Bay for years without human contact and not have psychological consequences.

AMY GOODMAN: David Rose, your response to that? The role of these psychologists?

DAVID ROSE: Well, the American Academy of Psychology -- Psychiatry and the Law, quite some time ago, suggested that its members should not take part. I do think that the state of the mental health of many detainees is very poor. I interviewed some of the British detainees when they first came back to Britain one year and two years ago, and I spoke to them again when I got back from my unfortunate trip last week, and I was very struck by how different they were, how much more articulate, how much stronger they sounded. They were really different kinds of people. I hadn't spoken to them for a good many months, and they were clearly getting themselves back to how they had been.

But I do think there is another issue about this question of the suicides, if they were suicides. And I have to accept that that is the likeliest explanation. I mean, the fact is, three people kill themselves on a single prison corridor, where the doors of the cells are basically open gates so you can see right in, where the light is kept on all night, and according to Guantanamo's own kind of troop regulations, a soldier or a military police officer is supposed to walk past the door of each cell every 30 seconds.

Now, Tariq Dergoul, one of these British detainees that I interviewed, said that quite often, they wouldn't do that. They just got bored and they would sit in their room at the end of the cell block, playing cards and smoking cigarettes and not doing anything. And there would be occasions when he would need something like, say, toilet paper, and he would have to holler for an hour or more before anybody would come.

You have to think that, you know, to kill themselves in this way, the way that the military says that they did, by using bed sheets or clothing through the mesh of their cells, fashioning nooses and then basically hanging to asphyxiate themselves -- you know, to make the noose is going to take you a minute. To die in that way, according to David Nichol, a consultant neurologist I interviewed for my article, is going to take you at least four to five minutes, maybe longer.

This is a case of criminal negligence, and it is rightly being investigated by the Navy's criminal investigation service, but this is the real reason why they didn't want media at Guantanamo last week. They're very happy to say, “We're transparent,” when they want to put on their highly chaperoned tours, and as Carol says, if you ask a blizzard of questions, sometimes somebody will let slip something and you actually find something out, but to have reporters there asking hard, tough questions when very, very difficult events are taking place -- they just didn't want us near.

AMY GOODMAN: David Rose, I want to thank you very much for being with us, attempted to get into Guantanamo last week, was turned back. His book is called Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights. And Carol Williams, I'd like to ask you to stay with us for just one more minute on a wholly different issue. You're speaking to us from St. Kitts, where the International Whaling Commission is meeting. The commission has backed a resolution calling for the eventual return of commercial whaling for the first time in 20 years. This is Mike Townsley of Greenpeace.

MIKE TOWNSLEY: We are breathing a huge sigh of relief this year, but next year we're going to face the same ridiculous situation. More countries brought in or bought in by Japan and really, the conservation governments have got to do more.

AMY GOODMAN: Carol Williams, you're in St. Kitts covering the story. Can you talk about the significance of this Whaling Commission vote?

CAROL WILLIAMS: Well, it doesn't have any immediate influence on the whaling ban. It will take a 75% vote by the 70-member International Whaling Commission to overturn that ban, but it's a symbolic victory for Japan, in that they have spent the last decade lobbying small Caribbean, African and Pacific countries to their side, with very substantial aid to their fisheries program or financial aid, and these little countries that have no whaling program -- some of them are landlocked -- are coming to Japan's side and voting to undermine the conservation role and responsibilities of the I.W.C.

AMY GOODMAN: Carol, thank you very much for being with us, Caribbean Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times in St. Kitts.

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