Around 460 "enemy combatants" were being held at Guantanamo Bay until this weekend. Then Saturday three detainees hanged themselves using knotted bedsheets. It was the first successful suicide attempt since the camp opened in 2002, and their actions have provoked a storm of criticism and a flurry of calls for the Guantanamo detention facility to be closed.

The indignation was sharpened following apparently insensitive comments from both the US administration and the commander of Guantanamo. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Colleen Graffy, undiplomatically told the BBC yesterday, "It does sound like this is part of a strategy -- in that they don't value their own lives, and they certainly don't value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic. Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move." Her comments followed those of base commander Harry Harris, who said, "They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."

This Orwellian newspeak has not gone down well with the German press. The German papers have been calling for Gitmo's closure since it opened and today they ramp up the invective.

"Many of the prisoners at Guantanamo don't know why the Americans have confined them there. Nor do they have a clue when they will be set free. Is more than half [of their sentence] over or will it last another 30, 40 or 50 years?" wonders Süddeutsche Zeitung today. "A detainee at Guantanamo is a man without rights. He is neither indicted nor put to trial…. Now three prisoners have chosen the last way out, death." Nor is the center-left paper impressed by Rear Admiral Harry Harris's assessment of the situation. The commentator suggests his words simply define the paranoia now reigning at Guantanamo. The result? "Since Sept. 11 America scents enemies everywhere." And, even if they planned their deaths as a publicity stunt to help their fellow detainees, who could blame them? "Down in the dungeon where no doors are left open to them, who could resent them that?" Their last hope is the US electorate, the paper believes. "They [US citizens] can free their land of the obsessive idea that the "war against terror" is also a war against human dignity."

Die Tagezeitung has it in for the feckless Harry Harris too. Surmizing that the suicides were an act of "asymmetric warfare" was not just feckless but reckless too. "Better information on the motivations behind this action could be revealed by the suicide notes of the suicide victims, but these have been deemed classified by the US." The paper acknowledges that this may even have been an act of solidarity with al-Qaida following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week, but even then: "Suicide and suicide bombing are not the same thing." It is possible the three inmates wanted to draw attention to the terrible conditions in Guantanamo the paper suggests. But, "Can the US really complain? If you build a facility beyond the reach of constitutional guarantees or international law, then you shouldn't be surprised, if its occupants keep trying to remind the world about it."

As one might expect Financial Times Deutschland shies away from hyperbole and plots a more moderate course. "The US administration has recognized, although slightly late, how devastating the existence of a camp outside constitutional law has been for the reputation of American democracy…. America doesn't just have to defeat terrorists in Iraq. If the war against terror is to be successful, it must also win the battle for hearts and minds around the world…. In the case of Guantanamo Bush has apparently understood this. Instead of allowing the criticism to continue to reverberate around him, he announced recently that he too would like to shut down the facility…. But this new approach may be too little to win back public opinion in the long run."