RIYADH, June 17: The bodies of two Saudis found dead in their cells at the Guantanamo prison last week, arrived here on Saturday aboard a chartered plane. The plane also carried the body of the third dead detainee, a Yemeni, to his home country.
Upon arrival, the bodies of the two Saudi nationals were taken to hospital for medical examination. The three men were identified as Ali Abdullah Ahmed of Yemen, and Saudis Mani Shaman al Utaibi and Yasser Talal al Zahrani.
The United States alleged the men hanged themselves with clothes and bed sheets in maximum-security cells last Saturday. The relatives of the three men, whom their families and friends insisted on calling martyrs, have questioned the American claim, arguing that being devout Muslims the men could not have even thought of committing suicide as it was forbidden in Islam.
The families are seeking legal help to find out the causes of the three deaths. Al-Zahrani, the father Yasser Zahrani, in a press statement said: “We will prosecute the US for not giving us a true report of the circumstances in which my son died.”
Yasser was born in Yanbu in 1984 and grew up in Abha, in the southern province of Asir. He completed his secondary education in Makkah and travelled to Dubai and then to Pakistan to study computer science and foreign languages.
It was from Pakistan that he went to Afghanistan for charity work, where the US forces arrested him.
The family of the other dead Saudi, Mani al-Utaibi, was also sceptical of the stated reason of his death.
