Lawyer For Detainees Speaks On Suicides

Taken from Yahoo News
By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press Writer, Mon Sep 25, 11:25 PM ET

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - An attorney who represents several Guantanamo Bay detainees said the U.S. military is attempting to falsely link him to the suicides of three prisoners at the U.S. base to deflect blame for its own actions.

Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Monday on attorney Clive Stafford Smith's accusation. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has seized some 1,100 pounds of documents in its probe of the June suicides by three detainees, the first to rock the Guantanamo Bay detention center on Cuba.

"As a matter of routine practice, we do not discuss ongoing NCIS investigations," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Stafford Smith said interrogators have been questioning his client Mohammed el Gharani on a weekly basis, attempting to lay blame for the suicides at the lawyer's feet.

"His interrogators have repeatedly questioned him about my purported role in the suicides," Stafford told the AP.

"The interrogator said I told my clients to kill themselves, and word was passed to the three men who did commit suicide," Stafford Smith added.

The Guantanamo suicides stoked international condemnation of the detention center, where alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members are held. Lawyers and human rights activists called the suicides an act of desperation.

But Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the detention facilities, described the suicides as "not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us" — an effort to increase condemnation of the prison.

Harris, in a statement to a federal court, said he asked the NCIS to investigate whether the suicides were "encouraged, ordered or assisted by other detainees or third persons."
El-Gharani, 19, was removed from the general prison population in March and placed in Camp Echo next to Shaker Aamer, an influential Saudi detainee, to try to persuade Aamer to cease a hunger strike, said Stafford Smith, who is also one of Aamer's attorneys.

The unnamed interrogator, in his questioning of el-Gharani, indicated military officials believe Stafford Smith had previously told Aamer "that people should die if the prison was to close."

"According to the interrogator ... Shaker is supposed to have told this to Mohammed and he passed the message along when he was taken back into the general population. The interrogator said I told my clients to kill themselves, and word was passed to the three men who did commit suicide," Stafford Smith said.

The attorney said soldiers have threatened to move el-Gharani to Camp 5, a maximum-security facility, if he does not implicate Stafford Smith in the suicides. He described the scenario allegedly laid out by interrogators as "a fantasy."

"The military is desperate to issue a report that places the full blame for the deaths on someone other than themselves," the lawyer said.

Army Brig. Gen. Edward A. Leacock, deputy commander of the detention operation, told the AP he does not know if Stafford Smith is a focus of the Navy investigation.

On Wednesday, a federal judge said the U.S. military may review thousands of legal documents seized from detainees in the probe of the deaths of the three detainees, who were found hanged in their cells on June 10. One suicide note had been written on paper stamped "attorney-client privilege," and belonged to another detainee, according to court papers.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered an independent "filter team" to review the paperwork for evidence.

Attorneys for dozens of detainees opposed that and demanded the government return the legal documents.

Separately Monday, the Red Cross began a two-week visit to the Guantanamo prison, saying it expected to get a first glimpse of 14 high-level terror suspects previously locked up in CIA secret prisons. The transfer from detention centers overseas was announced this month by President Bush.

Vincent Lusser, a spokesman for the Red Cross in Geneva, said that no date has been agreed for meeting with those detainees. But he said the Red Cross had "confirmation" it would be granted access to the suspects, who include alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
That's what we expect from this visit," he said.

U.S. Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock said last week that the detainees would be made available around Oct. 1.