Guantanamo detainees spead word to boycott trials

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- The message travels among Guantanamo detainees in whispers between recreation areas and shouts through slots in cell doors: Don't trust the Americans. Boycott.

Guards call it the Detainee News Network, and it is now prompting inmates to turn their backs on their war-crimes trials at this U.S. Naval station in southeast Cuba.

Six detainees currently at Guantanamo have appeared before a military judge, and five of those have joined the boycott, which is expected to spread as more suspected terrorists are arraigned. The mass action threatens to give America's first war-crimes trials since the World War II era the appearance of perfunctory proceedings and reduce the image of justice being served.

The U.S. military says it plans to eventually bring some 80 Guantanamo prisoners to trial, including those accused of plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Defense lawyers say peer pressure in the detention camps, where the United States holds about 270 men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban, is helping drive the boycott.

The attorney for Mohammed Jawad, a 23-year-old Afghan accused of a grenade attack that wounded two U.S. soldiers, said older inmates have heavily influenced his client.

"Many of them are advising him, 'Don't trust the Americans, don't trust the attorney, don't tell them anything, don't cooperate, boycott,'" said the Pentagon-appointed attorney, Air Force Maj. David Frakt.

Jawad refused to attend his hearings in March. Military guards finally had to drag him from his cell so he would appear in court.

Most prisoners spend as many as 22 hours a day alone in their cells, but they still manage to communicate.

An Associated Press reporter who visited two maximum-security "camps" at Guantanamo heard men shouting to each other. Voices carry through air conditioning ducts and through cell-door "beanholes" through which food is normally passed.

The detainees can also speak with one another through chain-link fences during recreation time. Some have tried to pass written messages by inserting them in books from the prison library.

Other camps for "compliant" detainees allow communal living, where passing messages is far easier.