Detainees, guards clash in suicide ruse

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Prisoners with makeshift weapons battled guards trying to save a detainee pretending to commit suicide at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in what military officials said Friday was a coordinated attack that left six prisoners injured.

The turmoil began Thursday morning when a detainee was found unconscious in his cell, said the detention center’s commanding officer, Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris.

Tests indicated he had taken an overdose of drugs similar to the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. He was hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

Guards searching the prison for contraband prescription medicine then found another detainee “frothing at the mouth” from an overdose of drugs. He was also hospitalized in stable condition.

In the evening, guards spotted a detainee in Camp Four – a medium security, communal-living unit – appearing to get ready to hang himself with a bed sheet in the room he shared with nine detainees. The apparent suicide attempt “was a ruse to get the guards to enter the compound,” Harris said.

The detainees had made the floor slippery with feces, urine and soapy water and attacked 10 members of Guantanamo’s quick-reaction force with fan blades, pieces of metal and broken light fixtures, Harris said.

For several minutes, the detainees appeared to have the upper hand, knocking some of the soldiers to the ground, said Army Col. Michael Bumgarner.

Guantanamo officials mustered 100 more guards before the quick reaction force gained control using pepper spray, unspecified “physical force,” five blasts of a shotgun that fires rubber pellets and one shot from a non-lethal weapon.