‘Suicide is a humane response to intolerable conditions. Especially where there is no end in sight and that’s the case here,’ David Remes, a lawyer for 15 Yemeni detainees, told AFP.

After the new US president announced he would close the detention camp at the remote US naval base in southeast Cuba by 2010, ‘everybody expected Obama to move more swiftly’ to release inmates or at least improve conditions, Remes said.

On Monday evening 31-year-old inmate Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih was found dead by prison guards after being held at Guantanamo since February 2002 and never charged by the military tribunals set up to try terror suspects held there.

Salih had been held in a psychiatric ward, had been on hunger strike and was being force-fed twice a day through a tube stuck in his nostril, ‘which is a sort of torture,’ Remes said.

Most Guantanamo detainees are still being held in isolation, in cells crudely furnished with a bunk, sometimes with no windows, under the perpetual glare of neon lights.

The new US administration, which has promised to abide by the Geneva Conventions on prisoners, has provided some improvements in the detainees’ lives, however.

Less-prized inmates have been allowed a few hours a day outside their cells, and even have access to rooms with tables and chairs, and TVs and DVD players.

A young Afghan prisoner Mohammed Jawad who has repeatedly attempted suicide was recently given four hours of recreation time instead of one, Human Rights Watch’s Stacy Sullivan told AFP.

‘His mood has dramatically improved,’ she added. ‘For lots of these guys, the problem is the isolation. That’s the greatest problem.’

Most of the detainees, however, despite Obama’s overtures on closing the facility, remain depressed and desperate, said Remes.

Only two out of the remaining 240 detainees have been able to leave the camp since January.

‘These isolated improvements cannot offset the misery of solitary confinement, especially the conditions of solitary confinement that these men must endure,’ maintained Remes.

‘And they can’t offset the continued harassment by the guards, and the brutality of the guards.’

A majority of the detainees ‘are more discouraged because Obama seemed to bring new hope and that hope proved to be false, a false hope,’ he added.

Sullivan said many of the detainees are suffering severe psychological problems.

‘When you’re going through your eighth year of detention without charge in a maximum security prison where you have very low contact with other human beings, it’s not at all surprising,’ she said.

Obama ‘tried to improve the conditions, based on years of reporting of journalists, human rights groups ... He made a good effort to respond to this criticism. It’s just not enough.’

Major Barry Wingard, a military lawyer representing Kuwaiti detainee Fayiz Al Kandari, reported that his client said he knew that under former US president George W. Bush ‘we would never get justice, we knew we would never get out.’

According to Al Kandari, with Obama’s election, the prison population ‘held up the possibility that things were going to get better,’ Wingard said, adding that ‘they began to think like (they were) a human being again,’ Wingard said.

Continued harassment by guards, notably physically tough ‘cell extractions,’ are still taking their toll, said Wingard.

Al Kandari reported to his lawyer that ‘guys go and bring you out of your cell for any small infraction, such as a towel being hung in the wrong location.’

Such action has been increasing, said Wingard. When detainees are extracted, ‘someone accidentally steps on your hand, rips your head at the pressure points ... and you might be pepper sprayed in your face.’

Uncertainty itself, about not knowing when freedom will come, ‘is a form of abuse that does not heal like a bruise or broken bone,’ said Wingard.

‘But still, they’re still waiting, still no justice. Four months delay here, six months delay there, another eight months...’

The case of the 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs is also an example of the hopelessness of inmates, Sullivan said.

Although US courts exonerated the Uighurs of any terrorism charges, political opposition to their release has led to the feeling among inmates that even US courts do not have the power to help them, she said.