STALAG GITMO

Trouble at Guantanamo

Something happened at Guantanamo Bay this month. Was it an uprising? Or was it made to look that way?

Moazzam Begg, the Birmingham bookshop owner released from the camp last year, said the detention cells were too closely monitored and controlled for inmates to organise a revolt so well. Clive Stafford Smith and Brent Mickum, defence lawyers who regularly visit clients in the base, said they suspected the official accounts were "rubbish".
Begg, who was seized by the CIA in Pakistan in 2002, said he was sceptical that inmates would be able to avoid the round-the-clock surveillance by CCTV cameras, foot patrols and watchtowers to make and hide weapons.

Several guards suffered "cuts, scrapes and bruises, just like a good football game," according to Colonel Mike Burngarner, the base's chief of detention operations.

[Next month, the US Supreme Court is due to deliver a critical ruling on whether President Bush's administration can legally refuse to block legal hearings for the 460 inmates now there. ]