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Guantanamo Bay Prisoners Tried to Commit Suicide, NYT Reports

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- Former prisoners held at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay base said conditions were so desperate that a number tried to commit suicide, the New York Times reported today.

Afghans and Pakistanis detained for months in Cuba before being released without charge said it was their uncertainty over their fate, combined with confinement in small cells, that caused inmates to attempt suicide, the newspaper said.

None of the former prisoners interviewed by the Times complained of physical mistreatment, the paper said. The men said that for the first few months, they were kept in wire-mesh cells about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet, covered by a roof but open at the sides to the elements, the Times added.

``I was trying to kill myself,'' Shah Muhammad, 20, a Pakistani who was captured in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, told the Times. ``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.''