The suicide of three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay detention camp has provoked a range of comments, some of which are more bizarre than others.
In media coverage the BBC and NY Times, for instance, refer to the legal and human rights arguments which have been deployed in the past, and the mounting criticism of the detention regime. They mention the estimates of previous suicide attempts, and the hunger strikes and force feeding which have also been reported.
The BBC resports that Downing Street thinks of the suicides as "a sad incident", and reminds us that Tony Blair has previously referred to the Guantanamo detention centre as "an anomaly". Ouch. President Bush must really be smarting in the face of that no-holds-barred critique.
The Foreign Office website doesn't carry any comment from the Foreign Secretary - though that could just be because it's the weekend. Mrs Beckett has commented on the Israeli shelling of civilians in Gaza (9th June) and the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi (8th June), so it may be that an official statement on the suicides in Guantanamo is still somewhere on the Press Officer's desk.
Clear winner of the 'Which Planet Was That Again?' Award, however, is camp commander Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. for this:
"I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."
It beggars belief.
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