Panel to review Guantanamo 'suicide papers'

The US government wants a judge to appoint a special panel to review legal documents seized from Guantanamo Bay detainees, as part of an investigation into the apparent suicide deaths of three prisoners.

The panel should include lawyers, translators and law enforcement and intelligence personnel who have not taken part in any legal proceedings against prisoners to ensure their independence, the government said in court papers filed in Washington.

Investigators said they confiscated personal documents, including letters from lawyers, after three detainees were found hanging from their steel mesh cells on June 10 – the first reported deaths of prisoners at the base.

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have condemned the confiscation of the legal papers as a violation of lawyer-client privilege and have asked a judge to order their immediate return.

Bill Goodman, legal director for the New York-based centre for constitutional rights, which represents about 200 detainees, said today that the government’s request for a special review panel would undermine trust between prisoners and their lawyers and delay the legal process.

“It’s another road block,” Mr Goodman said.

Authorities took the papers after finding a note in Arabic “related to the suicides,” in the mesh wall of one of the prisoners found hanged, Carol Kisthardt, an official with the naval criminal investigative service, said in court papers.

The note did not appear to be written by one of the detainees who committed suicide and it was written on paper provided by lawyers stamped with the words “Attorney Client Privilege.”

The investigators confiscated the personal papers of nearly all 450 detainees to pursue “all logical leads” in the investigation and to “determine whether other suicides were planned or likely to be planned,” Ms Kisthardt said.

Among the papers, investigators found instructions on tying knots and an email from someone at the base that appeared to contain sensitive information about the location of cells and operations at Guantanamo, where the US holds men suspected with links to al Qaida or the Taliban.

Investigators believe “the suicides may have been part of a larger plan or pact for more suicides that day or in the immediate future,” Harry B Harris, the commander of the detention centre, said in an affidavit filed with the government’s request.

As part of its request, the government said the special panel, or “Filter Team,” would review all the material and report any information that threatens national security or involves “imminent violence” but would not divulge anything that would violate lawyer-client privilege.