US authorises phone calls for Guantanamo prisoners

The US military said today that it will allow detainees to make regular phone calls to their families from Guantanamo Bay prison, where many have been confined in extreme isolation for as long as six years.

The new policy by the Defence Department, which previously said security concerns prevented such calls, is part of a strategy to ease conditions for frustrated prisoners at the US Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Inmates’ contact with the outside world generally has been limited to mail delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross and meetings with their lawyers.

The military has allowed a small number of detainees to speak with their families, but typically only on “humanitarian” grounds such as following a death in the family.

Detainees’ attorneys welcomed the phone calls but said reconnecting with family could make life more painful for those at Guantanamo, where the US military holds about 275 men on suspicion of links to terrorism, al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Marc Falkoff, who represents 17 detainees, said one of his Yemeni clients has a six-year-old daughter with whom he has never spoken.

“To be honest, I don’t know whether speaking with her will lift him from his depression or simply shatter him,” said Mr Falkoff, who added that the man has grown so hopeless he has asked his lawyers to stop meeting with him.

A spokesman for the detention centre, Army Lieutenant Colonel Ed Bush, said it is working out procedures for the calls.

He declined to provide details about which detainees would be eligible and how often calls would be permitted.

“I have no projected timeline for implementation but it is currently being developed,” he said.