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Riyadh: Saudi Arabia on Sunday identified two Saudi nationals found dead in their cells at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, while a rights group blamed US officials for their deaths. The two Saudis and a Yemeni committed suicide using sheets and clothes to hang themselves, the US military announced on Saturday. Military officials said the suicides were coordinated acts of protests at the base, where hundreds have been held without charge for years. Saudi Arabia said it has begun procedures to receive the bodies of Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al Habradi and Yasser Talal Abdullah Yahya Al Zahrani. The identity of the Yemeni was still not known. There have been at least 41 unsuccessful suicide attempts by 25 detainees since 2002, Guantanamo officials have reported.
Meanwhile, state-sponsored Saudi Human Rights group blamed the United States for the deaths and suggested that torture pushed the men to commit suicide. "There are no independent monitors at the detention camp so it is easy to pin the crime on the prisoners, considering it is possible they were tortured," said Mufleh Al Qahtani, the group's deputy director. He said his organization will carry out its own investigation. Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris said the three detainees - who were among 136 Saudis and 107 Yemenis held at the camp - had been detained for at least four years. One of the detainees was accused of being an Al Qaida operative, while another had been captured in Afghanistan and participated in a riot at a prison there, Harris said.
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