Guantanamo potty about Potter

2007-03-29 16:52

Guantanamo Bay - "War on terror" detainees at Guantanamo are avid Harry Potter readers and eagerly await the next book in the series featuring the schoolboy wizard, the camp librarian says.

While religion tops the reading lists of the overwhelmingly Muslim detainees, Harry Potter was a big favourite, said the chief librarian at the US-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"When you get to fiction, definitely Harry Potter," said the librarian, who would only give her first name, Maggie.

The camp has even pre-ordered the next instalment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, which is due out later this year.

"They're all waiting for number seven to come out," she told reporters.

The library staff offers the inmates, described as "enemy combatants" posing a threat to the United States, a choice of books once a week, she said.

"They take a variety of things out for the detainees to choose from," she said. "The library is one of the most popular things here."

The librarian said surfing and fishing were the main interests for Australian inmate David Hicks, who pleaded guilty on Monday to a single charge of supporting terrorism.

Hicks, who is expected to be sentenced later this week and eventually transferred back to his native Australia, was an "avid reader" who had built up his own collection of books during his five-year detention.

"He almost has his own library. He has quite a few items that people from Australia send him," she said.

He had numerous books about salt-water fishing, as well as books about surfing in Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, she said.

Some 385 detainees are held under elaborate security at the camp located at the remote US naval base in southeast Cuba. Hicks is the only detainee to have been charged so far under newly created military tribunals overseen by the US Defence Department.

Former detainees have alleged they suffered abuse and torture during their detentions, charges the US government denies.

- AFP