By ANDREW SELSKY

The ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – A “stench of despair” hangs over the Guantanamo Bay prison where three detainees committed suicide this weekend, a defense lawyer who recently visited the U.S. jail in Cuba said as calls increased Sunday to close the facility.

No other detainees had tried to commit suicide since U.S. military guards found two Saudis and one Yemeni prisoner hanging by nooses made from sheets and clothing early Saturday, Army Lt. Col. Lora Tucker told The Associated Press on Sunday.

While U.S. officials argue the suicides were political acts aimed at hurting American standing in the world, human rights activists and former detainees say prisoners are desperate after years in captivity and view suicide as the only way out, even though Islam forbids it.

A European official urged that the widely criticized prison be closed, and two senior U.S. senators expressed concern that most of the prisoners have not been charged with any crimes.

U.S. military guards were trying to prevent more suicides, such as removing sheets from cells when detainees are not sleeping. But rights groups and defense lawyers said they feared the suicides – the first detainee deaths at Guantanamo Bay – were just the beginning.

“A stench of despair hangs over Guantanamo. Everyone is shutting down and quitting,” said Mark Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey who along with his son, Joshua, represents two Tunisians at Guantanamo.

He said he was frightened by the depression he saw in one of the men when he visited the jail on June 2. The client, Mohammed Abdul Rahman, “is trying to kill himself” by participating in a hunger strike, Denbeaux said.

That afternoon, Rahman was force-fed, the lawyer said. Force feeding involves strapping a hunger striker into a “restraint chair” and feeding him through a tube inserted into the nose.

About 460 people, some of them in custody for 4 1/2 years, are being held at the Guantanamo camp on suspicion of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Only 10 detainees have been charged with crimes and face military tribunals ordered by Bush.

Until now, Guantanamo officials have said there have been 41 suicide attempts by 25 detainees and no deaths since the U.S. began taking prisoners to the base in January 2002.

Associated Press writers Paisley Dodds in London and Abdullah al-Shihri in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.