Still mum on the circumstances of the death, the United States on Thursday sent to Yemen the autopsied remains of a long-held detainee at Guantánamo who the military said committed suicide in his cell.

Detention center officials declined to say why they suspected suicide in the death of Muhammed Ahmed Abdullah Salih, 31, the first captive to die during the Obama administration at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Guards and military medical staff discovered his body in a cell sometime Monday and could not revive him, according to a brief military account, which was short on details.

Military officials disclosed the death on Tuesday. Then Wednesday, Justice Department lawyers filed notice at the U.S. District Court in Washington, which was in the embryonic stage of handling the Yemeni's unlawful detention lawsuits.

It used yet another variation of the dead detainee's name.

''Guantánamo Bay detainee and petitioner Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh al-Hanashi is now dead as a result of an apparent suicide,'' the single-page statement said.

It did not elaborate but directed the court to a Pentagon press release.

A Yemeni diplomat, dispatched from Washington, reached the remote base Wednesday, observed the autopsy and accompanied the repatriation flight to Sana'a on Thursday, embassy spokesman Mohammed Alabasha said.

Military spokesmen would not confirm an attorney's account that the man was being held in an ostensibly suicide-proof psychiatric ward at the prison camps, known as the Behavior Health Unit.

As of Sunday, prison camp commanders put the BHU population at five to seven detainees.

Salih was known as a committed hunger striker, said the camps spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, but had begun eating on his own in the weeks prior to his death.

DeWalt added that the autopsy was completed Wednesday and conducted by a military pathologist with an observer from the Miami-Dade medical examiner's office as well as a Muslim cleric and the Yemeni diplomat in the room.

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