Guantanamo inmates hid pills, nooses

GUANTANAMO BAY - Guantanamo detainees were found with pills stuffed into the waistbands of their pants and in one case, inside a prosthetic leg, weeks before three prisoners hanged themselves, a doctor at the camp hospital said today.

Guards found nooses in other prisoners' cells after the three deaths, said Rear Admiral Harry Harris, who oversees the detention operation. He said the stashed pills and nooses indicated other prisoners planned to take part in co-ordinated suicides, something some have acknowledged.

"They continue to look for ways to make their point or fight their fight," Harris said.

US military officials have implemented new measures aimed at preventing suicides since the prisoners killed themselves, an event that intensified pressure on Washington to close the controversial prison at a remote US naval base in Cuba.

The prisoners received new uniforms and new bed mattresses, and are being watched more closely while taking medication.

Two Saudis and a Yemeni hanged themselves with clothes and bedsheets in their cells on June 10. They were the first prisoners to die at Guantanamo since the United States began sending al Qaeda and Taleban suspects to the base in 2002.

The doctor in charge of the detention hospital said military officials searched cells after two prisoners overdosed on prescription drugs on May 18 and found stashes of pills.

Pointing to a box of prosthetic limbs, the doctor, whose name cannot be used for security reasons, said, "One was found hoarding medication in one; I think it was a leg prosthesis."

He said the prisoner had about 15 prescription pain pills, which "probably couldn't have killed him" but would have knocked him out, and several others had one or two pills hidden in their waistbands.

Guantanamo holds about 450 suspected al Qaeda and Taleban prisoners. Only 10 have been charged before US military war crimes tribunals.

Amnesty International and other rights groups have called for the closure of the camp, which has helped undermine international support for the US war on terrorism launched after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The doctor said 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the detainees receive medicine such as blood pressure medication, sleeping pills, pain killers, anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety pills.

Under procedures implemented after the overdoses, a guard now accompanies a corpsman who distributes pills on the cellblocks and watches as each prisoner puts the pill on his tongue, swallows it with water and then opens his mouth and his hands to show he has not hidden it somewhere.

"I think it's as good as it can be without putting it down the throat myself," the doctor said.

The two who overdosed had swallowed a combination of medicine apparently obtained from other prisoners because none had been prescribed for them.

Camp officials have made other changes since the suicides. The detainees got new uniforms that do not have hems where contraband could be stored, and new blue mattresses made of puncture-proof material that cannot be torn into shreds for making nooses, the doctor said.

Those who threaten to harm others or themselves are stripped of their clothing and made to either wear thickly padded smocks than cannot be tied into nooses, or go naked, until they have undergone psychiatric exams, the doctor said.

The doctor said camp officials are trying to make the camp suicide - but that "I would say that's impossible, short of putting these guys in straitjackets."

- REUTERS