SAN'A, Yemen – The father of a Yemeni detainee found hanged in his Guantanamo cell said Sunday he will only receive his son's body for burial once an international investigation is launched into the death.
Salah al-Aslami, 28, and two Saudi inmates committed suicide in separate cells at Guantanamo on June 10, using their sheets and clothing as nooses and leaving notes, the U.S. has said.
The body of the Yemeni detainee, whom U.S. prison authorities identified as Ali Abdullah Ahmed, arrived in Yemen Thursday and is being kept in the state-run Revolution Hospital in the capital San'a.
"The United States should have sent the autopsy report with the body, which didn't happen," Mohammed Abdullah al-Aslami, the father, told reporters Sunday.
"This reinforces the doubts that my son Salah committed suicide. My son died under torture," he added, urging that Guantanamo be closed.
A Yemeni Foreign Ministry official earlier said that the U.S. autopsy was expected to arrive no earlier than June 30.
The al-Aslami family's lawyer, Mohammed Nagi Alaw, told journalists Saturday that Yemeni authorities have not conducted an autopsy to determine the cause of death, as the family had requested. Alaw said earlier that Yemeni authorities said they would do an autopsy but did not give a date.
On Friday, Yemeni clerics told worshippers that al-Aslami had died a "martyr" and blamed the United States.
The father told The Associated Press earlier this week that his son was captured in Afghanistan in 2003.
The three suicides have fueled demands in the United States and abroad to close the prison, where more about 460 detainees captured in the war on terror are being held, some of them for years without charge.
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