well no hope of release, no hope of trial, no hope of anything leads to hopelessness.

I don't care what anyone says, but once there is no hope, anything can happen.

Quote:

[size=18]Guantanamo suicides 'acts of war'[/size]

The suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amount to acts of war, the US military says.

The camp commander said the two Saudis and a Yemeni were "committed" and had killed themselves in "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

Lawyers said the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair.

A military investigation into the deaths is now under way, amid growing calls for the detention centre to be moved or closed.

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.

hey 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.

[b]'Creative'[/b]

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."

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".

[b]'Heroes'[/b]

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.

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".

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5068606.stm]BBC News[/url]

Quote:

[size=18]Dead detainee 'was to be freed'[/size]

[b]One of the three men who committed suicide at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was due to be released - but did not know it, says a US lawyer.[/b]

Mark Denbeaux, who represents some of the foreign detainees said the man was among 141 prisoners due to be released.

He said the prisoner was not told because US officials had not decided which country he would be sent to.

Meanwhile, a top US official appeared to row back from the tough line taken by other officials over the suicides.

At the weekend, one top state department official called them a "good PR move to draw attention", while the camp commander said it was an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

"I wouldn't characterise this as a good PR move," Cully Stimson, US deputy assistance secretary of defence, told the BBC's Today programme, on Monday.

"What I would say is that we are always concerned when someone takes his own life, because as Americans we value life even if it is the life of a violent terrorist captured waging war against our country."

'Despair'

The Pentagon named the prisoner who had been recommended for transfer as 30-year-old Saudi Arabian Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi.

He was a member of a banned Saudi militant group, the defence department said.

The other two men who died on Saturday morning were named as Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 28, from Yemen, and Yassar Talal al-Zahrani, 21, another Saudi Arabian.

Ahmed was a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative who had participated in a long-term hunger strike from late 2005 to May, and was "non-compliant and hostile" to guards, the Pentagon said.

Zahrani, 21, was a "front-line" Taleban fighter who helped procure weapons for use against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to the department.

Professor Denbeaux told the BBC World Service that the feeling among detainees at the Cuba camp was one of hopelessness.

"These people are told they'll be 50 by the time they get out, that they have no hope of getting out. They've been denied a hearing, they have no chance to be released," he said.

He said US policy was to refuse to tell prisoners they were due to be released until a location had been found.

Utaybi had been declared a "safe person, free to be released" but the US needed a country to send him to, Professor Denbeaux said.

"His despair was great enough and in his ignorance he went and killed himself," he said.

Mounting criticism

The prison camp at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds some 460 prisoners, the vast majority without charge.

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

Criticism of the camp is mounting, even among President Bush's Republicans.

"There are tribunals established... Where we have evidence they ought to be tried, and if convicted they ought to be sentenced," said Republican Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Some inmates had been detained on "the flimsiest sort of hearsay", he added.

The United Nations rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, said European leaders should use a summit with President George W Bush next week to press for the prison's closure.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said procedures at Guantanamo Bay violated the rule of law and undermined the fight against terrorism.

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5070514.stm]BBC News[/url]

Quote:

[size=18]US Guantanamo tribunals 'illegal'[/size]

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Bush administration does not have the authority to try terrorism suspects by military tribunal.

Justices upheld the challenge by Osama Bin Laden's ex-driver to his trial at Guantanamo, saying the proceedings violated Geneva Conventions.

The ruling is seen as a major blow to President George W Bush - but it does not order the closure of Guantanamo.

Mr Bush said he would respect it but also protect Americans from "killers".

The Cuba-based facility currently holds about 460 inmates, mostly without charge, whom the US suspects of links to al-Qaeda or the Taleban.

[b]Profound implications[/b]

Osama Bin Laden's ex-driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, is one of 10 Guantanamo inmates facing a military tribunal.

He launched the proceedings demanding to be tried by a civilian tribunal or court martial, where the prosecution would face more obstacles.

In its ruling, the court said: "Whether or not the government has charged Hamdan with an offence against the law of war, cognisable by a military commission, the commission lacks power to proceed."

"The procedures adopted to try Hamdan also violate the Geneva Conventions," the justices said.

The ruling does not demand the release of prisoners held at Guantanamo but gives the administration an opportunity to come up with another way of trying those held.

The BBC's Nick Miles in Washington says the implications of the decision are profound, as Washington will either have to court-martial the detainees or try them as civilians.

It may end up releasing many prisoners and returning them to their home countries, our correspondent adds.

[b]'Serious look'[/b]

One of the dissenters, Justice Clarence Thomas, took the unusual step of reading part of his opinion from the bench, saying the decision would "sorely hamper the president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy".

President Bush said he would "look seriously" at the case, adding: "The ruling, as I understand it, won't cause killers to be put out on the street."

He added that he would work with Congress "to determine whether or not the military tribunals will be an avenue in which to give people their day in court".

The decision was welcomed by senior Democratic Senator Carl Levin.

"The Supreme Court has once again demonstrated its vital constitutional role as a check and balance on the actions of the executive and legislative branches of government," he said in a statement.

Mr Hamdan had success in his first legal outing, in the US District Court in Washington, which ruled that he could not face a military trial unless he had previously been found not to be a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention.

He claims POW status, but like all camp prisoners, he is denied this and is instead designated an "unlawful combatant" by the Bush administration.

However, an appeal court reversed this decision and said Mr Bush had the authority to order the trials.

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5129904.stm]BBC News[/url]

So... does this mean anything? I am sure I have read somewhere the reason guantanamo was chosen was so that the supreme court would not have jurisdiction?

Quote:

[size=18]US detainees to get Geneva rights[/size]

All US military detainees, including those at Guantanamo Bay, are to be treated in line with the minimum standards of the Geneva Conventions.

The White House announced the shift in policy almost two weeks after the US Supreme Court ruled that the conventions applied to detainees.

President Bush had long fought the idea that US detainees were prisoners of war entitled to Geneva Convention rights.

The Pentagon outlined the new standards to the military in a 7 July memo.

The directive says all military detainees are entitled to humane treatment and to certain basic legal standards when they come to trial, as required by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

The Bush administration has come under intense and sustained international criticism for its treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The military has been using the site to house hundreds of detainees, many believed to have been picked up off battlefields in Afghanistan.

When the detention centre was established in 2002, President Bush ordered that detainees be treated "humanely, and to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva".

His spokesman Tony Snow said on Tuesday that the Pentagon directive did not represent a change: "It is not really a reversal of policy. Humane treatment has always been the standard."

[b]Court steps in[/b]

At the end of June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that the Bush administration did not by itself have the authority to order that the detainees be tried by military commission.

It said its decision was based on both US military law and the Geneva Conventions - asserting for the first time in US law that the detainees were entitled to Geneva protections.

But the Supreme Court left open the possibility that the detainees could be tried by military commission if Congress established an appropriate legal framework for doing so.

The Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on the issue on Tuesday morning, just as news of the new military policy became public.

Daniel Dell'Orto, a defence department lawyer who was the first to testify, said there were about 1,000 detainees in US military custody around the world.

Guantanamo Bay holds an estimated 450. Mr Dell'Orto did not say where the others were being held.

The new Pentagon policy applies only to detainees being held by the military, and not to those in CIA custody, such as alleged mastermind of the 11 September attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The Geneva Conventions, which were passed in the wake of World War II, are meant to guarantee minimum standards of protection for non-combatants and former combatants in war.

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5169600.stm]BBC News[/url]

Can someone put this on the site aswell please. Too shattered.