Guantanamo 'suicide' was in maximum-security cell

The Saudi Arabian prisoner who apparently committed suicide at Guantanamo Bay this week was being held in isolation in the maximum-security Camp Five section.

That disclosure can only add to international pressure for the facility to be shut down.

The Pentagon has not named the victim, nor formally confirmed a cause of death. It was left to the Saudi government in Riyadh to identify him as Abdul Rahman Maadha al-Amry. According to US Southern Command, in whose jurisdiction the prison falls, he was found dead in his cell on Wednesday afternoon "unresponsive and not breathing".

There was no word of what Mr al-Amry - who had not been charged - was supposed to have done, or where he was originally picked up. But a US spokesman said he had been detained in the part of Guantanamo reserved for the "least compliant" and "high-value" inmates. "The actual cause of death is under investigation," he added.

Assuming it is confirmed, the suicide would be the fourth since the prison camp opened in January 2002, after two Saudi detainees and one Yemeni hanged themselves with sheets a year ago.

"I can assure you it is hell on earth," said Wells Dixon, a US defence lawyer who has met detainees at Camp Five. Many of them were in evident despair: "You can see it on their faces. It's transparent."

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the Reprieve organisation which represents 37 Guantanamo prisoners, said last night: "After more than five years without any charges, the prisoners in Guantanamo are becoming increasingly desperate." The group had warned that more suicides were inevitable, but "they [the US military] remain frozen in a nightmare of their own creation".

Guantanamo must be closed immediately, he added. "There is enough blood on everyone's hands."

In a separate challenge to the treatment of terrorist suspects, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of the Boeing company, claiming it secretly flew three CIA-held suspects overseas, where they were tortured.

The cases involve Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen, in July 2002 and January 2004; Elkassim Britel, an Italian citizen, in May 2002; and Ahmed Agiza, an Egyptian citizen, in December 2001.