Three detainees commit suicide at Guantanamo

Three detainees at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide in what apparently was a joint pact to protest the US military prison that holds suspected terrorists, a senior administration official said today.

They are the first deaths reported at the detention centre in Cuba, where the US is holding about 460 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

It was not immediately clear when the inmates died.

It also was not clear whether the suicides were connected to a violent clash last month between detainees and military guards at Guantanamo.

The Pentagon scheduled a briefing for later today.

President George Bush, spending the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat, was notified of the incident, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Pentagon was announcing the details.

There is also a hunger strike among detainees, though the number of inmates refusing food dropped to 18 by last weekend from a high of 131.

The prison is a sore subject between Bush and US allies who otherwise are staunch supporters of his policies.

A UN panel said on May 19 that holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo violated the world’s ban on torture. The panel said the US should close the detention centre.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith are among those who also recently have urged the US to close the prison.

On Friday, after the prison came up during a meeting with Fogh Rasmussen at Camp David, Bush said his goal is to do just that.

“We would like to end the Guantanamo – we’d like it to be empty,” Bush said. But he added: “There are some that, if put out on the streets, would create grave harm to American citizens and other citizens of the world. And, therefore, I believe they ought to be tried in courts here in the United States.”

Bush said his administration was waiting for the Supreme Court to rule whether he overstepped his authority in ordering the detainees to be tried by US military tribunals. “We’re waiting on our Supreme Court to act,” he said.

The US military later said the men were “found unresponsive and not breathing in their cells by guards” early today and died despite attempts to revive them.

The military called the deaths suicides but said Navy officials were investigating the cause of death.

The two Saudis and one Yemeni “were pronounced dead by a physician after all lifesaving measures had been exhausted”, the US military said in a statement from the Southern Command headquarters in Miami.