Guantanamo More Strict, Detainees Say
Defense Attorneys Relate Clients' 'Despair'

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006

Defense attorneys for detainees who have spent years at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said the 14 high-value terrorism suspects transferred there Monday are entering a prison that appears to be increasingly restrictive.

Attorneys for several detainees said their clients have reported tighter enforcement of regulations and regular attempts to disrupt detainees' sleep and prayers since a violent melee in one housing unit in May and the apparently coordinated suicides of three detainees in June. Some attorneys said their clients seem more hopeless and worn down in recent weeks than at any time in their incarcerations.

"The strong sense I have is that ever since the suicides, things have just gotten really tense, really harsh, with no flexibility," said P. Sabin Willett, a lawyer who visited clients at Guantanamo in a trip that ended Friday. "I don't mean that they're torturing people; it's just that they are being harsher in how they respond. And that's creating a growing sense of despair."

Guantanamo Bay officials declined to provide many details yesterday about the conditions under which the terrorism suspects, who include suspected architects of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will be held. But lawyers familiar with Guantanamo said they are likely to be placed in segregation at the prison, which has a range of cells. They include some that resemble cells at a typical U.S. prison, some dormitory-style blocks and some small mesh holding areas.

The 14 detainees -- transferred from secret CIA prisons on a Sunday night flight -- are the first to be brought to Guantanamo Bay in nearly two years.

Military officials said all detainees at Guantanamo are treated humanely and according to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions, which are now part of official Defense Department policy. They acknowledge that some policies and procedures had to be changed in light of the suicides and argued that detainees embellish and coordinate their stories.

"In the wake of the suicides and the disturbance, the procedures were looked at to see whether they could be improved for the detainees' health and safety and for the safety of the guards," said a Defense Department official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. "Things are a little tighter."

Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the facility's commander, told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that the 14 detainees arrived safely earlier this week and that "all appeared to be in good condition." Harris said he signed for their custody.

Harris declined to discuss where in the prison compound the detainees will be housed but said it is a "high security" facility. Harris also would not say how long ago Joint Task Force Guantanamo was alerted that it would be receiving new detainees. He said no policies or procedures were changed in anticipation of their arrival.

The detainees will be afforded some of the same privileges as the approximately 440 other military detainees at Guantanamo, Harris said, including visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ability to send and receive mail, access to reading materials, and exercise time. The detainees could soon have a chance to meet with legal counsel.

Because they had been held in secret sites, some of the detainees may be experiencing their first contact with the outside world in years.

Harris and other military officials reiterated the danger the detainees pose. The Joint Task Force, "as you know, exists to ensure that extremely dangerous individuals, such as these men, are unable to engage in their efforts to plan or conduct terrorist attacks," he said.

Defense attorneys worry that their clients, most of whom have not been charged, will face harsher conditions indefinitely.

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, who represents several detainees at Guantanamo, said his recent visits have been alarming. Isa al-Murbati, 41, of Bahrain, told him that guards are purposefully interfering with Muslim prayers and sending out aggressive response teams to physically subdue detainees who do not cooperate.

"It appears that authorities at Guantanamo are trying to reassert control," Colangelo-Bryan said.

Melissa A. Hoffer visited clients in Cuba last month and said that the environment is "completely repressive" and that she had not seen her clients in such despair since she began representing them.

Lakhdar Boumediene, a Bosnian-Algerian in his early forties, told Hoffer that he now lives in a steel "cage" and that the restrictions have been "unbearable."

"Despite everything, they have retained some sense of hope, and that's something that has always blown me away about them," Hoffer said. "During my last visit, I sensed some erosion of that hope, and desperation creeping in."

Mohamed al-Qahtani, who is believed to have been a potential 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, is living under conditions similar to those the new detainees may face. Though he has not faced aggressive interrogation since early 2003, Qahtani remains isolated in a cell with lights on 24 hours a day. Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents Qahtani, said Qahtani has experienced psychological problems from the rough questioning.

She said her visits with about 10 clients during the month of July aroused concern.

"Now it's so tight and harsh that they're having mental breakdowns," Gutierrez said. "The deterioration of my clients is just remarkable."