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Guantanamo under scrutiny
12/06/2006 10:58 - (SA)
Miami - The US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, faced renewed scrutiny and criticism on Monday after the suicides two days earlier of three "war on terror" detainees.
A top senator from President George W Bush's Republican party criticised the policy of prolonged detentions of hundreds of terror suspects without trial at the US naval facility on Cuba's south-eastern tip.
"Those people have to be tried," said Arlen Specter, chairperson of the senate judiciary committee.
"There are tribunals established... Where we have evidence they ought to be tried, and if convicted they ought to be sentenced," said Specter, who said some inmates have been detained based on "the flimsiest sort of hearsay".
Calls to close the prison
A senior Senate Democrat, Jack Reed, called for the prison to be permanently shuttered.
"They should as quickly as possible try to close the facility," said Reed, a leading Democrat on military matters.
"There has to be a good procedure that balances the need to keep these people off the street with the need to find out who in fact is a terrorist. That hasn't been done yet by the administration," he said.
The suicides on Saturday pose a new challenge for Bush's administration, already under strong pressure to close the camp from critics that include the United Nations, international human rights organisations, European governments and Britain's top legal advisor.
First successful suicides
The deaths, which also came amid a prisoner hunger strike, were the first successful suicide bids after repeated attempts by inmates in the camp.
The three detainees who killed themselves hid themselves behind laundry and otherwise tried to keep guards from seeing them take their own lives, The New York Times reported.
"One of the prisoners hanged himself behind laundry drying from the ceiling of the cell, and had arranged his bed to make it look as if he was still sleeping," the newspaper quoted Lieutenant Commander Robert Durand of the navy as saying.
Hid from guards
"The other two detainees who committed suicide also took steps to prevent guards from seeing that they had put nooses around their necks," the report cited him as saying.
The "ruse" by inmates "raises questions about how long it took military guards to discover the bodies. Regulations at Guantanamo call for guards to check on each inmate every two minutes," the report said.
The Pentagon identified the three detainees as two Saudis, Mani bin Shaman bin Turki al-Habardi, 30, and Yasser Talal Abdulah Yahya al-Zahrani, 22, and a Yemeni, Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 33, the report added.
Suicides an act of 'warfare'
White House officials described the three men as committed terrorists, and military officials said that none had been among the handful of prisoners whose cases had been brought before military commissions for prosecution, the report added.
Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the camp's commander, described the suicides as an act of "warfare" meant to draw international attention.
"These are dangerous men and they will do anything they can to do gain support for their cause and the advance of their cause," Harris said.
Attempts
There have been 41 suicide attempts by about 25 individual detainees but in the previous cases, US medical personnel were able to save them, according to the Pentagon.
Some 460 prisoners are being held at the prison. Only 10 have been formally charged since the camp opened in early 2002.
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