"People were becoming mad because they were saying: `When will they release us?"  Shah said

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 18 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Freed after long months of despair and agony, two detainees who were detained by the U.S. at Guantanamo spoke about the unspeakable conditions they suffered along with other prisoners, a leading U.S. newspaper reported.

In interviews at their homes, weeks after being released, two of the freed men, a Pakistani and an Afghan, talked of the overwhelming feeling of injustice among the approximately 680 men detained indefinitely at U.S. naval base, The New York Times said.

The two men said that for the first few months, they were kept in small wire-mesh cells, about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet, in blocks of 10 or 20, adding the cells were covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements.

"We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space," said Suleiman Shah, 30, from Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

"Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years," he said, adding that the detainees were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower.

"After four and a half months we complained and people stopped eating, so they said we could shower for five minutes and exercise once a week," said Shah who spent 14 months at the camp.

It was the uncertainty and fear they would be there forever that drove many of the detainees to despair, he confirmed.

"All of the people were worried about how long we would be there for," Shah said.

"People were becoming mad because they were saying: `When will they release us? They should take us to the high court.' Many stopped eating," he added.

Suicide Attempts

Capt. Warren Neary, a spokesman at the detention camp, told the Times that in the 18 months since the detention camp opened, there have been 28 suicide attempts by 18 individuals, with most of those attempts made this year.

"I was trying to kill myself," said Shah Mohammad, 20, a Pakistani who was arrested in northern Afghanistan in November 2001 and handed over to American soldiers and flown to Guantanamo in January 2002.

"I tried four times, because I was disgusted with my life…It is against Islam to commit suicide, but it was very difficult to live there. A lot of people did it. They treated me as guilty, but I was innocent," he lamented.

Mohammad, who spent 18 months in the detention camp before his release, further said that "when they first took us there they would not let us talk, or stand or walk around the cell.

"At the beginning it was very hard to bear," he added. "There was no call to prayer, and there was no shade. In the afternoon the sun came in from the side."

Amnesty International called in February for an investigation into conditions at the camp after reports about suicide attempts by the detainees.

According The New York Times, one Taliban fighter from the southern province of Helmand, who only goes by the name Rustam said in May that he was driven to trying to hang himself.

"There were some very strange people, they were hitting their heads on the wall, insulting the soldiers, and that is why I hated it," said Rustam, 22, in an interview in an Afghan prison in Kabul.

"I think they were really crazy people, and that's why I kept asking to be taken out for questioning," he said.

When he tried to hang himself, Rustam said, the guards found him quickly.

None of the prisoners have killed themselves, but American officials have confirmed that one man has suffered severe brain damage.

Dr. Najeef bin Mohamad Ahmed al-Nauimi, a former justice minister in Qatar, who is representing nearly 100 of the detainees, identified the prisoner as Mish al-Hahrbi, a Saudi school teacher.

He said that the teacher became desperate over not knowing what his future held and so tried to hang himself.

Hahrbi was resuscitated but is unlikely to recover from a severe hemorrhage, the lawyer said.

The detainees come from more than 40 countries, and include more than 50 Pakistanis, about 150 Saudis and three teenagers under 16, a majority of them captured in Afghanistan, said Dr. Nauimi.

He represents many of the Saudis, and American lawyers represent about 14 prisoners from Kuwait.

There are also 83 Yemenis, he said, and a sprinkling of others, including Canadians, Britons, Algerians and Australians, and one Swede.

Since January 2002, at least 32 Afghan prisoners and three Pakistanis have been released from Guantanamo.

At the same time, the American military is preparing to place about 10 of the detainees before a military tribunal soon, the daily said quoting U.S. officials.

Human rights organizations have raised concerns about the conditions at Guantanamo and the unclear legal status of the detainees.

Concerned about their prolonged detention without trial or clear legal status, the head of the International Red Cross (ICRC), who visited the detainees, urged the Bush administration last month to start legal proceedings and to institute a number of changes in conditions at the camp.

On January, the ICRC called on the U.S. to clarify the status of hundreds of people held without charge in the U.S. military base at Guantanamo.

Washington refuses to consider them prisoners of war, even though a majority were captured on the battlefield, and does not allow them access to lawyers.