US halts severely restricted Guantanamo Bay press access

The United States has stopped press access to Guantanamo Bay as the prison comes under renewed criticism for the apparent suicides of three detainees last weekend.

More than 1,000 journalists have visited Guantanamo Bay since the US military began locking up suspected al-Qaida and Taliban militants there four years ago.

The press access was severely restricted: Journalists could not talk to detainees, had to be accompanied by a military escort and have their photos censored.

Now, the Pentagon has shut down access entirely – at least temporarily - expelling reporters this week and triggering an outcry from human rights groups, attorneys and media organisations.

“Now is the time when the media is most needed,” said British-born human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has filed legal challenges on behalf of about 40 detainees. “The fact that right now, the most important time in the history of Guantanamo, they are being banned is un-American.”

Pentagon officials defend the temporary ban on media, saying guards and base officials are preoccupied with investigating the deaths and maintaining security as detainees become more defiant.

A clash with guards in May left six detainees injured.

Another 10 prisoners were on hunger strike yesterday, including six being force-fed with nasal tubes.

US officials say the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which sits on cactus-studded hills in south eastern Cuba overlooking the Caribbean and mangrove forests, has been unusually open to journalists – despite news media complaints that access while on the prison is severely curtailed and requests for interviews often vanish in the military bureaucracy.

“It’s the most transparent detention facility in the history of warfare,” insisted Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, echoing comments by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The Pentagon rejected all requests by news organisations this week to cover the investigation and aftermath of the suicides, the first detainee deaths since the detention centre opened.

About 10 news organisations were to cover a military tribunal this week for one of the 10 detainees charged with crimes, but the hearing was postponed and hours before they were to depart for Guantanamo the Pentagon cancelled the authorisations that reporters need to visit.

Reporters cover the hearings from the courtroom – where they are barred from speaking to participants, even during breaks - or they can view the proceedings on a large-screen TV near a press centre where military censors look at their photographs and video and decide what is out of bounds.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon expelled two journalists – from the Los Angeles Times and The Miami Herald – who arrived at Guantanamo on a charter flight and two others from The Charlotte Observer, who were at the base for coverage of a commander from North Carolina.

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders said the expulsions damaged the credibility of the US government. “We condemn the Pentagon decision and we call on the US government to take the necessary steps to guarantee the media free access to the naval base at Guantanamo,” the group said.

The Inter American Press Association, a major organisation of journalists from across the Americas, also criticised the Pentagon’s decision to expel reporters from the US naval base.

“The American authorities must respect and understand that … the free exercise of the media is a fundamental value of all democratic societies,” wrote Gonzalo Marroquin, president of the association’s Commission on Freedom of the Press and Information.

Media visits have been common, drawing journalists from dozens of countries, but have always come with thick strings attached.

Access to the base is available only through military planes or small charters. The charters take about three hours to fly from Florida to Guantanamo because they cannot travel through Cuban airspace and must circle around the island.

On the base, a 10-page list of ground rules bars journalists from interviewing anyone without approval and prohibits photos of detainee faces and base features, such as radar or the coastline.

The US military says such restrictions are needed for security and to protect detainees’ privacy.

But critics say the military is being cynical in saying it wants to protect detainees’ privacy. One prisoner, speaking in English, once told a visiting AP reporter that he wanted to talk. But when the reporter asked the military if she could interview the detainee, the answer was no.

Other reporters have been have been hustled away when prisoners have tried to communicate with them – through food slots in the cells of the highest-security section, or from behind curtains at the medical clinic.

Gordon said regular media access was scheduled to resume next week, with journalists from three European news organisations taking a tour.

But without access to the detainees, Stafford Smith said such visits amounted to little more than propaganda.

“The media sees a very sanitised view of what’s going on,” he said.