Did Guantanamo Make Him Do It?

Sunday's Washington Post addressed the challenges of releasing Guantanamo inmates illustrated by the story of Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi, who was released in 2005. Two years later he deployed a truck laden with explosives at an Iraqi checkpoint , killing himself and thirteen Iraqi soldiers, wounding forty-two others.

His lawyer Thomas Wilner believes that his violent end was inspired by Guantanamo.

My whole story is made up," he said, according to Wilner's notes and his recollection of the conversation. "I didn't carry weapons. I didn't fight. I was not a member of the Taliban or al-Qaeda."
Ajmi said he had told U.S. interrogators at a detention center in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he had been held prior to Guantanamo, that he fought with the Taliban because the guards "were beating the hell out of me."
"I wanted it to stop," he said. "I told them what they wanted to hear."

This miscalculation took Ajmi to Guantanamo, where his mental condition rapidly deteriorated.

Wilner does not believe Ajmi was subjected to the harshest interrogation tactics. But he thinks his condition was the result of the cumulative impact of detention in a place where prisoners are never told how long they will be held captive, where family visits are prohibited, where letters from home often are heavily redacted, and where blankets and books are deemed luxury items that can be confiscated at the slightest infraction.
In Wilner's view, Ajmi's initial misbehavior may have accelerated his downward spiral because of the punishment it elicited. He was placed in isolation, with all of his meager personal effects removed, provoking more anger and more misconduct, which was in turn punished with more time in the detention blocks.
"Guantanamo took a kid -- a kid who wasn't all that bad -- and it turned him into a hostile, hardened individual," Wilner said.

(Much of the above was directly taken from the Post article.)

There are many parallels in treatment for Guantanamo detainees and juveniles in teen treatment facilities. In many cases, individuals are detained for unspecified time periods for bogus reasons. All communication is censored. One is not allowed any control over one's environment, losing basics like blankets or books. This lack of control can be devastating for one's mental health, as Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi's story illustrates.