With a doctor from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office observing, military pathologists Wednesday conducted an autopsy on a Yemeni detainee at Guantánamo who apparently committed suicide in his cell, the military said.

Detention center officials declined to describe the circumstances of the death of Muhammad Ahmad 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 short military account. Salih's was the fifth suspected suicide in the prison camps' seven-year history.

The New York Center for Constitutional Rights, meantime, said that Salih, who also at times used the surname al Hanashi, was one of only about eight of 240 detainees currently in the camps who had never consulted an attorney.

His Guantánamo military intelligence case file alleged that Salih left his homeland in April 2001 to defend the Taliban in Afghanistan against the Northern Alliance. He was captured at age 23 during the U.S. invasion in reprisal for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Although the Obama administration has screened and cleared more than 50 of the Guantánamo detainees for transfer, a government source said Wednesday that Salih was not among them. A Justice Department-led task force is examining each captive's case and had yet to decide what to do about Salih, said the source, who had access to the task force tally but was not authorized to speak about it.

The task force is dividing detainees into categories -- those to be released, those to be charged in civilian and military courts, and those who should be subjected to indefinite detention without trial.

A pro-bono team from the law firm Winston & Strawn had agreed to handle Salih's unlawful detention suit, said CCR attorney Shayna Kadidal, who coordinates Guantánamo captives' cases.

But the team had only recently obtained Justice Department authorization to visit him, Kadidal said. They were slated to introduce themselves to him later this month.

Unclear was whether Salih would agree to see them. Guantánamo records indicate he was a chronic hunger-striker who had at one point withered to 86 pounds and had boycotted his annual parole-board-like proceeding.

Moreover, Kadidal said, the law firm had been in contact with Salih's wife and other kin in his native Yemen but had not yet told the detainee.

At the base, Lt. Cdr. Brook DeWalt declined to say when Salih's remains might be repatriated to Yemen, a nation with which the U.S. government has yet to reach a wide-ranging agreement on returning Guantánamo prisoners.

The Yemeni Embassy in Washington dispatched an envoy to the base on Wednesday.

DeWalt confirmed that the Miami medical examiner's office had likewise dispatched an independent observer, at the request of the military. He did not name the doctor, and The Miami Herald was unable to reach a spokesperson for the office late Wednesday.

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