Dead Guantanamo Prisoner On Why He Gave Up on Life

Adnan Latif was found dead in his cell on September 10th, 2012, just a day before the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. He was 32. Latif, a Yemeni citizen, had been detained at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade, despite a 2010 court ruling that ordered the Obama administration to "take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif's release forthwith," due to lack of evidence that he had committed any crime. He suffered at the hands of the US government in ways that most people can't begin to comprehend, and his death should be a reminder that the national shame that is Guantanamo Bay lives on and now enjoys bipartisan support.

Reexamining a letter he wrote to his lawyer David Remes in December of 2010 shows the depths of his despair near the end of his life. His letter begins simply. The first paragraph is just one devastating sentence: "Do whatever you wish to do, the issue is over." He then goes on to describe Guantanamo as, "a prison that does not know humanity, and does not know [sic] except the language of power, oppression, and humiliation for whoever enters it."

"Anybody who is able to die," Latif writes, "will be able to achieve happiness for himself, he has no hope except that."

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