US: The authorities at Guantánamo Bay prison were accused yesterday of blocking inmates' access to mental health care, despite dozens of suicide attempts and hundreds of cases of self-harm.
As further details emerged of three suicides, the Bush administration faced renewed criticism of the camp's conditions and its policy of indefinite detention there, as well as its dismissal of the reasons for the deaths as a publicity stunt.
On Sunday Colleen Graffy, deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC the deaths were "a good PR move to draw attention". Yesterday, however, the State Department sought to distance itself from her remarks.
"We would not say that it was a PR stunt," department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "We have serious concerns any time anybody takes their own life."
The men, two Saudis and a Yemeni, hanged themselves with knotted bedsheets.
The International Committee for the Red Cross, the only rights organisation with access to the 460 detainees, said it had asked Washington to move forward a planned visit to the camp.
Meanwhile, Leonard Rubenstein, director of Physicians for Human Rights, said the Pentagon had ignored warnings that conditions could drive inmates to suicide.
"Military officials and the Bush administration have refused any independent medical evaluation of the detainees," he said, adding that the Pentagon admitted to 360 instances of detainees cutting or otherwise harming themselves in 2003, and 120 in 2004.
By 2003 one in five detainees was taking antidepressants because of what Mr Rubenstein said was the isolation, humiliating interrogations, sleep deprivation and despair.
Independent doctors were essential because of inmates' distrust of military doctors and their involvement in interrogation.
"Unless we have a significantly profound change in due process in interrogation or in the very existence of Guantánamo, we can expect to see more suicides," Mr Rubenstein warned.
The authorities insist that they provide adequate medical care.
None of the three dead men was on suicide watch or on medication, said Guantánamo spokesman Cmdr Robert Durand. "They were reported to be in good spirits."
He said the three blocked the view into their cells by hanging laundry. One padded his bed to make it appear he was sleeping.
Although regulations call for guards to check each inmate every two minutes, he would not say whether this had been done for the three on the night in question. However, he said at least one man had prepared over days.
"It obviously had taken some amount of time to tear the sheet into strips and to create the noose."
How guards could miss such deception will figure in an investigation into the first deaths since the camp was established to hold suspects in the war on terror in 2002. - (Guardian service)