GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- For two weeks in June, two dozen war-on-terror captives staged a sit-in at an exercise yard in a maximum-security prison camp -- refusing to budge from a labyrinth of open-air cells in a previously undisclosed coordinated protest that evoked images of the early days of Camp X-Ray. Guards delivered the detainees' meals to their recreation yards rather than risk injury by forcing the 26 protesting prisoners back into their solitary cells. Captives turned trash bags into toilets and plastic water bottles into urinals in the standoff.Military officials this week confirmed the mass protest by about half the prisoners at Camp 5 in response to a detailed query from The Miami Herald. Camp 5 is a steel and cement building where the least cooperative captives are held.
Defense lawyers learned of the episode while it was happening but were gagged under a Pentagon system that initially classifies as secret all attorney-client meetings.