An Afghan detainee at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has died in an apparent suicide, the US military said. The prisoner, identified as Inayatullah, a 37-year-old accused of being a member of al-Qaeda, was found dead by guards conducting routine checks at the facility on Wednesday.
"An investigation is under way to determine the exact circumstances of what happened," Navy Commander Tamsen Reese, a spokeswoman at the Guantanamo Bay US naval base, said.
The prisoner was not conscious or breathing when guards checked on him in the morning, and they immediately tried to resuscitate him, US Southern Command said in a statement.
"After extensive lifesaving measures had been exhausted, the detainee was pronounced dead by a physician," the statement said.
Inayatullah is the eighth prisoner to die at the detention centre since the United States began sending foreign captives with alleged al-Qaeda or Taliban links to Guantanamo Bay in January 2002.
Five others died of apparent suicides and two died of natural causes.
Last year, a US federal judge dismissed a complaint by the families of two Guantanamo detainees who claimed that their deaths in 2006 had been covered up when the Pentagon ruled them suicides.
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