Awal Gul, who was held at Guantanamo for nearly nine years over alleged links to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda collapsed and died Tuesday of “apparent natural causes” after exercising on an elliptical machine, the US military said this week.
In a statement posted on its website in Pashto on Friday and in English on Saturday, the Afghan Taliban called Gul an “eminent commander” and blamed his death on the “bestiality of the American rulers,” according to SITE Intelligence Group monitors.
The Taliban denounced the continued existence of the Guantanamo Bay prison, more than one year after US President Barack Obama’s promised deadline to close the site where 173 “war on terror” suspects remain without charge or trial.
The Obama administration has run into a series of legal and political hurdles, and the timetable to shut the jail has been indefinitely pushed back.
Gul’s death “is a clear indicator of the American violation of all national and international agreements and covenants and portrays their brutal behavior with the detainees in this illegitimate prison,” the Taliban added.
It also urged the United States to stop “torturing” Guantanamo prisoners and “end violation of their human rights.”
“Otherwise, the responsibility will rest with your military and judicial chiefs, should the Islamic Emirate have to take any step in response to your brutality,” added the statement signed by “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
Gul was the seventh inmate to die at the prison since it opened in January 2002, the Pentagon said, with several detainees committing suicide.
The military alleged Gul was a Taliban recruiter and commander of a base in Jalalabad who had contact with Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
His death occurred after Guantanamo detainees held a series of peaceful protests, demanding the prison be shut down as promised by US President Barack Obama. The US Naval Criminal Investigative Service has launched a probe into the cause and manner of the death.
Source: AFP