Walter White, an international lawyer who specialises in human rights, told the BBC the Guantanamo camp was likely to be considered a "great stain" on the human rights record of the US.

There have been dozens of suicide attempts since the camp was set up four years ago - but none successful until now.

The men were found unresponsive and not breathing by guards on Saturday morning, said officials.

They were in separate cells in Camp One, the highest security section of the prison.


I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of warfare waged against us
Rear Adm Harry Harris
Camp commander

They hanged themselves with clothing and bed sheets, camp commander Rear Adm Harry Harris said.

He said medical teams had tried to revive the men, but all three were pronounced dead.

'Creative'

Rear Adm Harris said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair.

"They are smart. They are creative, they are committed," he said.

"They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."


If it's perfectly legal and there's nothing going wrong there - well, why don't they have it in America?
Harriet Harman
UK Constitutional Affairs Minister

All three men had previously taken part in some of the mass on-and-off hunger strikes undertaken by detainees since last August, and all three had been force-fed by camp authorities.

They had left suicide notes, but no details have been made available.

The US military said the men's bodies were being treated "with the utmost respect".

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Mr Bush had "expressed serious concern" at the deaths.

"He also stressed that it was important to treat the bodies humanely and with cultural sensitivity," he said.

A spokesman for UK Prime Minister Tony Blair described the suicide as a "sad incident".

'Heroes'

UK Constitutional Affairs Minister Harriet Harman told the BBC on Sunday the camp should be moved to the US or shut down.

"If it's perfectly legal and there's nothing going wrong there - well, why don't they have it in America and then the American court system can supervise it?" she said.


HAVE YOUR SAY
We are losing credibility with our friends and allies
Jim, Pinehurst, USA

Send us your comments

William Goodman from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights told AFP news agency the three dead men were "heroes for those of us who believe in basic American values of justice, fairness and democracy".

Mr Goodman, whose organisation represents some 300 detainees, said the government had denied them that.

Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, told the BBC the men had probably been driven by despair.

"These people are despairing because they are being held lawlessly," he said.

"There's no end in sight. They're not being brought before any independent judges. They're not being charged and convicted for any crime."

On Friday, Mr Bush said he would "like to end Guantanamo", adding he believed the inmates "ought to be tried in courts here in the United States".

A senior Senate Democrat, Jack Reed, called for the prison to be permanently shuttered.

"They should as quickly as possible try to close the facility," said Reed, a leading Democrat on military matters.

"There has to be a good procedure that balances the need to keep these people off the street with the need to find out who in fact is a terrorist. That hasn't been done yet by the administration," he said.

The suicides Saturday pose a new challenge for the Bush administration, which is already under strong pressure to close the camp from critics that include the
United Nations, international human rights organizations, European governments and Britain's top legal advisor.

The deaths, which also came amid a prisoner hunger strike, were the first successful suicide bids after repeated attempts by inmates in the camp, located on a US naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba.

The United Nations rapporteur on torture said Sunday that the European Union should pressure Bush at an upcoming summit in Vienna to close the Guantanamo camp.

The US-EU summit on June 21 "would be an excellent opportunity to demand, and to facilitate, an immediate closing" of the prison, said Manfred Nowak, speaking by telephone from Washington in an interview with AFP.

Nowak authored a UN report released in February sharply critical of the Bush administration's handling of prisoners at Guantanamo.

Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the camp's commander, described the suicides as an act of "warfare" meant to draw international attention.

"These are dangerous men and they will do anything they can to do gain support for their cause and the advance of their cause," Harris said.

All three had been on hunger strike previously, he said.

The first victim was found early Saturday by an "alert" prison guard who had noticed "something out of the ordinary" in the cell, Harris said in a telephone press conference.

"When it was apparent that the detainee had hung himself, the guard force and medical teams reacted quickly to attempt to save the detainee's life," Harris said.

Two other inmates were also found hanging in their cells after guards checked on other prisoners, he said. They had used clothes and sheets to hang themselves, he told reporters.

There have been 41 suicide attempts by about 25 individual detainees but in the previous cases, US medical personnel were able to save them, according to the
Pentagon.

A lawyer acting for the families of Saudi nationals held in Guantanamo Bay questioned the US military's account.

"I have informed their families and they do not believe that they have committed suicide and consider them martyrs," Saudi lawyer Kateb al-Shimmari told AFP on Sunday.

"We have great doubts over the US version of the story because they were being held in extraordinary circumstances and were under 24-hour surveillance."

Shimmari identified the two dead Saudis as Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, 22, a native of the western Saudi shrine city of Medina, who had been detained in
Afghanistan when just 17, and Maniy bin Shaman al-Otaibi, 29, from the Dawadmi area, north of the capital.

Bush expressed "serious concern" after learning about the suicides, said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Bush had said Friday that he hoped to "empty" Guantanamo by sending some detainees home and trying the most dangerous in US courts.

Some 460 prisoners are being held at the prison. Only 10 have been formally charged since the camp opened in early 2002.

Human rights groups said the deaths showed the inmates were in a state of despair because of the indefinite nature of their detention.

"Holding people indefinitely without access to family, regular legal process, or independent medical care, is an invitation to disaster," said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First.

On June 4 Guantanamo officials said the number of prisoners on a hunger strike had fallen to 18, from a peak of 89 on June 1.

Human rights activists have charged that force-feeding methods employed by the US military are cruel and that doctors overseeing the technique are violating medical ethics.

However, the Pentagon's Southern Command chief suggested yesterday's deaths might have been aimed at swaying the US Supreme Court as it decides the legality of military tribunals for Hicks and nine others ordered by President George W Bush.

"This may be an attempt to influence the judicial proceedings in that perspective,'' said General Bantz Craddock.

Suicides 'act of warfare'

Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the camp's commander, described the suicides as an act of "warfare''.

"These are dangerous men and they will do anything they can to do gain support for their cause and the advance of their cause,'' Harris said.

But Greens leader Bob Brown today said the comments suggesting the suicides were a public relations stunt were "inappropriate and inhumane" and could fuel global terrorist sentiment.

Senator Brown said he would introduce a motion to the Senate tomorrow calling on the Australian parliament to support calls for Guantanamo Bay to be closed

The deaths touched off new scrutiny and criticism of the prison over the weekend, with human rights groups and foreign dignitaries demanding the facility be closed.

Influential Senator Arlen Specter, from Bush's Republican Party, said some detainees were being held on "the flimsiest sort of hearsay.''

Bush expresses 'serious concern'

Bush expressed "serious concern'' after learning about the suicides, said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Bush had said last week that he hoped to "empty'' Guantanamo by sending some detainees home and trying the most dangerous in US courts.

The US Defence Department says one of the three Guantanamo detainees who committed suicide had ties to al-Qaeda and another had fought for the Taliban.

It said the third man had been cleared for transfer to the custody of another country.

Suicide victims named

The Defence Department named the men as Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi al-Utaybi and Yassar Talal al-Zahrani, both of Saudi Arabia, and Ali Abdullah Ahmed of Yemen.

The prisoners hanged themselves on Saturday after making nooses from sheets and clothing yesterday, officials said.

About 460 people, some of them in custody for four and a half years, are being held at the Guantanamo camp on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Only Hicks and nine other detainees have been charged.

Hicks' US Marine Corps lawyer, Major Michael Mori, has expressed concern about his client, saying the Adelaide man was depressed after being kept in solitary confinement for more than three months.

Hicks 'very desperate'

"I found him very desperate for human contact ... he'd lost a lot of weight,'' Mori told ABC radio.

Prime Minister John Howard, however, said a recent consular visit to Guantanamo Bay raised no concerns for Hicks, despite the suicides.

But Terry Hicks, David's father, told ABC today: "They (consular officials) advised me he [David] is fit and well," Mr Hicks said.

"But when Mori rang after the consular officials rang I questioned him about this and he said 'No, David is in isolation. He is not fit and well - he is depressed'.

"'Fit and well' is their stock-standard answer. What are they trying to prove?"

41 suicide attempts

There have been 41 suicide attempts by about 25 individual detainees since Guantanamo Bay was set up in 2002.

But in the previous cases, US medical personnel were able to save them, according to the Pentagon.

All three had been on hunger strike previously, he said.

Many detainees held at the camp claim they were not involved in al-Qaeda or were low-level Taliban members who never intended to harm the United States.

None of the three who committed suicide had been formally charged.
US authorities alleged Ahmed, 28, was a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative.

Throughout his time in Guantanamo, he had been non-compliant and hostile to the guard force, and was a long term hunger striker from late 2005 to May 2006.

Zahrani, 21, was accused by the US of being a frontline Taliban fighter.
He was allegedly involved in a 2002 prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, that resulted in the death of CIA officer Johnny Michael Spann.

His lawyer said Zharani had been detained in Afghanistan when just 17.
The US military accused Utaybi of being a member of the militant missionary group, Jama'at Al Tablighi.

The 30-year-old, born in al-Qarara, Saudi Arabian, had been recommended for transfer to another country for continued detention, though the Defence Department did not specify name the country.

That number did not include hundreds of what military officials called "self-harm incidents" and "hanging gestures," where detainees cut themselves deliberately or wrapped bedding around their necks in what Guantanamo officials said were attempts to gain attention or express frustration without actually trying to cause death.

Foreign governments, including U.S. allies, and human rights groups have criticized the indefinite detentions and the prisoners' lack of legal rights at Guantanamo. The
Pentagon insists the detainees are treated humanely.

On May 18, two prisoners overdosed on prescription drugs they had hoarded, in what camp officials called a coordinated attempt at martyrdom.

In January 2003, a Saudi prisoner tried to hang himself in his cell and suffered brain damage that left him in a coma for more than three months.

In August 2003, 23 prisoners tried to hang or strangle themselves -- 10 on the same day -- in a mass protest. Two were treated at a hospital for minor injuries and Guantanamo officials said at the time that most were not genuine suicide attempts, but were part of a coordinated effort to disrupt camp operations.

Bahraini captive Jumah Dossari has tried to kill himself a dozen times. In October 2005, he handed his visiting lawyer a note to examine later. When the lawyer stepped out, Dossari hanged himself in his cell and cut a gash in his arm.

A guard cut him down and medical personnel sutured his arm. He later tried to rip out the stitches, in what the military described then as his ninth confirmed suicide attempt.

'NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE'

The note he had handed his lawyer described feelings of desperation, humiliation and abandonment, according to a translation obtained by The Washington Post.

"There was no other alternative to make our voice heard by the world from the depths of the detention centers except this way in order for the world to reexamine its standing and for the fair people of America to look again at the situation and try to have a moment of truth with themselves," Dossari wrote.

Prisoners have staged numerous hunger strikes since shortly after the first detainees arrived in January 2002. The largest began in August 2005 and peaked on September 11 of that year, when 131 prisoners were refusing to eat -- they are counted as hunger strikers when they miss nine consecutive meals.

When doctors determine they are so undernourished that their health is in danger, camp officials force-feed them through tubes inserted into the nostrils and down into the stomach, strapping them into restraint chairs to keep them from vomiting up the liquid.

Three have been fed that way for nearly 10 consecutive months. Pentagon officials last week affirmed force-feeding hunger strikers as part of a long-standing policy "to preserve the life of detainees by all appropriate clinical means."

In a May 18 interview with Reuters and other journalists visiting Guantanamo, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of the detention operation, acknowledged the eventual death of a prisoner was inevitable, and that even a death from natural causes would put Guantanamo under a spotlight.

"We're going to be subjected to a lot of questions, and rightfully so. Legitimate questions. Why did this person die? Did you have something to do with it? Was it of natural causes? And I believe, if it is of natural causes, we're still going to be criticized," Harris said.

Zubayda had been shot in the stomach and groin when captured in Pakistan, the motion said. FBI paperwork on Zubayda indicated he was "treated with various types of medication" at the time of his interrogation, the attorney wrote. However, the type or dosage isn't mentioned, making it impossible for the defense to determine "what effect the medications may have had on Abu Zubayda's ability to provide accurate information," according to the motion.

On these men's word, Patel contends, Padilla was arrested May 8, 2002, upon arrival at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport from Switzerland.

At a news conference a month later, President Bush accused Padilla, who grew up in Plantation, of being part of a plot to detonate radioactive, or dirty, bombs in the United States.

Padilla was classified as an "enemy combatant" and held in a military brig, without being charged criminally, for 31/2 years.

In November, in the face of a legal challenge, the Bush administration conceded his "enemy combatant" status. Instead, Padilla was indicted in Miami federal court along with four others on charges of being a part of a "North American support cell" designed to send money and recruits to holy wars overseas.

At the time Padilla was arrested, FBI agents seized a cell phone allegedly provided by al-Qaida agents, an address book and more than $10,000 in cash. Patel wants those items barred as evidence at trial because he says the warrant for Padilla's arrest was based on informants rendered unreliable by torture or medical distress.

Patel asked Judge Marcia Cooke to have Muhammad, who is being held in Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and Zubayda, who is being held in an undisclosed place in the United States, testify at an evidentiary hearing.

U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta declined to comment.

The Council of Europe last week published the results of its long-running investigation into rendition and found that 14 European countries, including Britain, had colluded with the CIA. It also suggested that secret prisons were operating in eastern Europe, but did not have conclusive proof.

The fax, intercepted by Swiss intelligence, indicates that Egypt has such proof. It is headed: "The Egyptians have access to sources which confirm the existence of American secret prisons".

Its shocking contents would never have been uncovered if it hadn't been for a conscientious surveillance officer with the Swiss secret service, stationed at an eavesdropping centre in Zimmerwald, south of Berne. On November 16, six days after the fax was first sent via satellite from Cairo to London, the officer intercepted it using the Onyx eavesdropping system. The officer marked their personal coded identifier, "wbm", on the page and put the information down in a COMINT SAT report. The intercepted fax was given the reference number S160018TER00000115.

The report noted: "The [Egyptian] embassy got the information from its own sources that 23 Iraqi and American citizens have actually been interrogated at the military base Mihail Kogalniceanu close to the [Romanian] city of Constanza at the Black Sea. Similar interrogation centres exist in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria."

The fax also referred to "prisoners being transported with American military planes from the base Salt Pit in Kabul to the Polish base Szymany and to the Romanian base on September 21 and 22, 2005." It then went on to say: "In contradiction to all quoted facts, the Romanians deny the existence of the prisons that are used to interrogate members of al-Qaeda."

The activities of one secret CIA rendition jet do indicate that captives have been dropped off in Romania. The plane, N313P, a Boeing 737, landed in Timisoara on January 25, 2004 just before midnight after flying from Kabul. It stayed on the runway for just over an hour and then flew on to Palma, Mallorca, where a CIA rendition team stayed in a hotel under fake identities.

Dick Marty, the Swiss senator who led the Council of Europe investigations into renditions, said in his report: "Having eliminated other explanations - including that of a simple logistics flight, as the trip is a part of a well-established renditions circuit - the most likely hypothesis is that the purpose of this flight was to transport one or several detainees from Kabul to Romania."

Rendition jet N313P also travelled from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to Kabul on September 21, 2003. On September 22, it flew from Kabul to Szymany, a Polish defence ministry airfield. Close by is the Stare Kiejkuty base used by Polish intelligence. CIA jet N313P stayed only 64 minutes before flying to Romania.

"It is possible," says Marty, "that several detainees may have been transported together on the flight out of Kabul, with some being left in Poland and some being left in Romania." After leaving Romania, the plane landed in Morocco, where "rendered" captives have been tortured with the knowledge of both British and American intelligence.

Both Poland and Romania deny allowing CIA "black site" prisons to operate on their territory. EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini has warned that any member states caught operating secret jails on behalf of the Americans could have their voting rights suspended.

Russian TV has also accused Ukraine of running a secret CIA prison near Kiev, claiming that an old Soviet site used to store nuclear weapons has been turned into a holding facility where trucks have been seen delivering shipments of people to Ukrainian soldiers.

The film, by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, the duo who also directed the critically-acclaimed The Boys of Baraka, opened to an appreciative and flabbergasted audience at the 2006 TriBeca Film Festival, where it received the Special Jury Award. The directors skillfully captured the daily interactions of a world that would be foreign to most viewers: children speaking in tongues and talking of being "born again" at age 5.

The star of the film is Pastor Becky Fischer, who explains the startling mission of her "Kids on Fire" camp: "I want young people to be as committed to laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are in Pakistan." At the camp, the children are asked: "How many of you want to be those who will give up your life for Jesus?" Little hands shoot up from every direction. They are told: "We have to break the power of the enemy over the government." At one point, Becky yells: "This means war! Are you a part of it or not?" More little hands.

The directors take us into the homes of the children, where we see them "pledge allegiance to the Christian flag" and play a video game called "Creation Adventure" that debunks evolution. A mother helps her children with homework and informs them that, "Global warming is not going to happen. Science doesn't prove anything."

The film takes us back to the camp, where the children are gathered for their daily teaching. Suddenly, a camp counselor places a life-size cardboard cutout before the group. No, it's not Jesus. It's George Bush. Clapping erupts and Becky encourages them to "say hello to the President." Becky claims that "President Bush has added credibility to being a Christian."

Statistics about the spectacular number of "evangelicals" in the United States are ominously flashed onscreen throughout the movie, implicitly suggesting that Becky and her assembled camp are giving us a peek into the inner workings of the "evangelical movement." But it might be worth questioning the conventional wisdom that the 100 million Americans who call themselves evangelicals all march to the same beat. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson have a vested interest in presenting this group as a conservative monolith under their exclusive and unquestioned control. And while there is no denying the electoral power of the Religious Right, Democrats should not assume that all, or even a majority, of evangelicals naturally hew to the Republican line.

While it's never disclosed in the movie, Jesus Camp is in fact a Pentecostal camp, which puts it far to the right theologically and politically, even within the evangelical movement. The directors explained that they didn't want to confuse audiences by disclosing this and instead referred to the camp only as "evangelical." Unfortunately, they unwittingly added to the enormous confusion that people like Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, has been trying to clear up for years.

Wallis, who is the founder and editor of Sojourners, a progressive Christian magazine, spends much of his time traveling the country talking to students and meeting with evangelical leaders. Wallis believes the future of the country is in the hands of moderate evangelical voters. He estimates, based on polls and personal experience, that about half of evangelicals are the immovable Religious Right but the other half are open to, if not hungry for, progressive leadership.

"The facts on the ground are changing," says Wallis. He reports a marked increase in attendance of his speeches on Christian campuses and the issues he gets asked about the most are not gay marriage or abortion. Wallis says abortion will naturally remain important issue to the moderate evangelical voter, but it is not a litmus test. They want leaders who will acknowledge their moral concerns about this issue and who are committed to decreasing the number of abortions, a position that puts them well within the mainstream of Democratic voters.

And it's no different if Wallis is meeting with the leader of an evangelical mega-church. One such leader recently told Wallis, "I'm a conservative on Jesus, the Bible and the Resurrection, but I'm becoming a social liberal." When Wallis asked why, he heard what has become a familiar refrain: evangelicals are increasingly despairing over the neglect of the poor, the environment, and the U.S. inaction on fighting the genocide in Darfur.

White evangelicals make up close to 25 percent of the electorate and, in 2004, a whopping 78 percent of them voted for George Bush. But evangelicals didn't always line up behind the Republican candidate. According to Pew Research, in 1987, white evangelicals were almost evenly divided between the two parties. And today, many evangelical leaders believe that a growing number of these voters are prepared to return to the Democratic fold, but only if Democrats stop misunderstanding, neglecting, and even intentionally ignoring what was and should be a natural constituency.

Meanwhile, evangelical groups are finding their voice on many progressive issues. U2 front man Bono has talked extensively of the unlikely partnership he has forged with evangelical leaders in fighting the AIDS crisis. One of those leaders is Ted Haggard, a staunch Republican who founded the now 12,000-person New Life Church and heads the National Association of Evangelicals. Haggard personally counseled British Prime Minister Blair on how to persuade President Bush to support Third World debt relief and has made protecting the environment a central issue of concern for his church.

In February, Christianity Today's cover blasted "Why Torture is Always Wrong." Joining with the Catholic Church, more than 50 evangelical Christian leaders and organizations recently voiced their support for an immigration bill that would allow illegal immigrants to become U.S. citizens without returning to their native countries. And earlier this year, a group of 86 evangelical Christian leaders launched a campaign to educate Christians about climate change and urged the U.S. Congress to enact legislation to curb global warming. The campaign calls on Christians to battle global warming, "which will hit the poor the hardest because those areas likely to be significantly affected first are the poorest regions of the world."

These concerns sounds pretty progressive. So, why are so few white evangelicals voting Democratic? Wallis believes Democrats have ceded the territory of religion to the Republican side, allowing them to use it to divide the electorate. Or, as Wallis has said, "I think this idea that all the Christians, all the religious people are jammed in the red states and the blue states are full of agnostics is a bit overblown in the media. It's more complicated than that."

Much, much more complicated.