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Date published: 6/11/2006
By ANDREW SELSKY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico--Three Guantanamo Bay detainees hanged themselves with nooses made of sheets and clothes, the commander of the detention center said yesterday. They were the first reported deaths among the hundreds of men held at the base for years without charge. The suicides, which military officials said were coordinated, triggered further condemnation of the isolated detention center, which holds some 460 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Only 10 have been charged with crimes and there has been growing pressure on the U.S. to close the prison. Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found dead shortly after midnight yesterday in separate cells, said the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts were made to revive them, but they failed. "They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets," Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris told reporters from the U.S. base in southeastern Cuba. "They have no regard for human life," he said. "Neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us." To prevent more suicides, guards will now give bed sheets to detainees only when they go to bed and remove them after they wake in the morning, Harris said. Gen. John Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said the three left suicide notes. He refused to disclose the contents. One of the detainees was a mid- or high-level al-Qaida operative, Harris said, while another had been captured in Afghanistan and participated in a riot at a prison there. The third belonged to a splinter group. Their names were not released. Some of the evidence against detainees is classified, so they aren't permitted to know of it, and are thus unable to challenge it. "They're determined, intelligent, committed elements and they continue to do everything they can to become martyrs in the jihad," said Craddock.
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