U.S. military guards raided the largest camp at Guantanamo Bay early Saturday morning and fired four non-lethal shots as they moved detainees into solitary cells to suppress a widening protest, military officials said in a statement.

The unusual pre-dawn raid, ordered by Cmdr. Rear Adm. John W. Smith, was prompted by detainees' efforts to cover surveillance cameras, windows and glass partitions -- blocking views by guards -- amid an ongoing hunger strike that has now spread to more than 40 detainees and required officials to order some prisoners to be force fed through tubes.   

During the raid, "some detainees resisted with improvised weapons, and in response, four less-than-lethal rounds were fired. There were no serious injuries to guards or detainees," according to the statement released by the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo.

Carlos Warner, a lawyer who represents detainees, said in an email to NBC News the raid was "a major event" and accused military officials of "escalating the conflict."

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Warner also said the military timed the raid just after an International Red Cross delegation left the facility.

“They are doing exactly what they shouldn't be doing - provoking men who have nothing to lose and who are ready to die. These actions will drive the men closer to death, so yes the situation is rapidly deteriorating,” he added.

A White House spokesperson said: "We have been monitoring the situation at Guantanamo closely and were informed by DOD in advance of the Task Force's plan to transition detainees at Camp VI from communal to single-cell living to ensure their health and security."

In recent weeks, as the hunger strike has spread among detainees, human rights groups have called on the Obama administration to fulfill its promise to shut down Guantanamo and step  up its efforts to return detainees who have been cleared for release to their home countries.

Lawyers for the detainees said they have been told of detainees losing consciousness and coughing up blood due to the hunger strike.

The Saturday morning raid occurred in Camp VI -- the largest at Guantanamo -- where detainees deemed "compliant" live in communal areas and are given special privileges. But military officials said that, in order to "reestablish proper observation" of the detainees, military forces began moving the detainees back into "single cell" confinement, triggering the resistance that led them to fire shots. Officials have said in the past that guards are equipped with rubber bullets.

Last month, U.S. military officials denied any detainees' lives were in danger but acknowledged that resistance and frustration among the detainees is growing, a development that a senior general said is because they are “devastated” that President Barack Obama’s pledge to shut down the facility has not been fulfilled.

White House officials say they remain committed to closing Guantanamo but have been blocked from doing so by Congress, leading officials to close the small State Department office charged with finding new homes for the detainees.

Related:

Pentagon ponders Gitmo overhaul amid growing detainee unrest

'Non-lethal round' fired at Gitmo detainees in soccer field incident, US military confirms

The Pentagon is considering plans for a $150 million overhaul of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- including building a new dining hall, hospital and barracks for the guards -- as part of an ambitious project recommended by the top general in charge of its operations, officials tell NBC News.    

The proposed spending spree comes amid mounting signs of unrest among Guantanamo detainees that lawyers say is threatening their  lives. U.S. military officials confirmed Wednesday that the number of hunger strikers at Guantanamo has more than tripled in the last two weeks -- from 7 to 25 -- and that eight of them are being force fed through tubes. Defense lawyers said in a letter to Congress this week they have gotten reports that “over two dozen men have lost consciousness.”

U.S. military officials denied any lives were in danger but acknowledged that resistance and frustration among the detainees is growing, a development that a senior general said is because they are “devastated” that President Barack Obama’s pledge to shut down the facility has not been fulfilled.

“They had great optimism that Guantanamo would be closed,” said Gen. John Kelly, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, when asked about the hunger strikes during testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. “They were devastated, apparently… when the president backed off -- at least their perception -- of closing the facility.

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“He said nothing about it in his inauguration speech,” Kelly continued, referring to President Obama. “He said nothing about it in his State of the Union speech. He has said nothing about it. He's not -- he's not restaffing the office that… looks at closing the facility.”

White House officials say they remain committed to closing Guantanamo but have been blocked from doing so by Congress, leading officials to close the small State Department office charged with finding new homes for the detainees. At the same time, Kelly –- who took over as Southcom commander last year -- began laying the groundwork for a substantial overhaul of Guantanamo, testifying that many of the buildings there are “falling apart.”

“Gitmo seems to be the one place they don’t care about spending money,” said David Remes, a defense lawyer who represents detainees, noting that the plans for the overhaul are moving forward even as the sequester is forcing costs and layoffs throughout the government.

“They will spare no expense to keep these men there rather than bring them to the United States.”

Guantanamo is already considered the country’s most expensive prison per capita by far, with an operating budget this year of nearly $177 million, which means that taxpayers are paying more than $1 million for the care and maintenance of the 166 detainees.

But Lt. Cmdr. Ron Flanders, a spokesman for the Southern Command, told NBC News that Kelly has recommended substantial new spending that includes nearly $100 million slotted to build new barracks for the 848 guards stationed at the facility. The current guard barracks are plagued by mold, he said.

In addition, Flanders said, Kelly has signed off on construction projects that include:

- a new $12 million dining hall for the troops;

- a new $11.2 million hospital and medical units for the detainees;

- a $9.9 million “legal meeting complex” where lawyers can meet their detainee clients;

- a $10.8 million “communications network facility” to store data, including computer records and tapes of interrogations, which has been required by a federal court order.

All these projects have been signed off by Kelly in the last few months and been forwarded to the Pentagon, where they are being reviewed by budget officials in Secretary Chuck Hagel’s office, Flanders said.

At the same time, Flanders said, the operations budget for Guantanamo has already increased substantially this year with the construction of a $40 million fiber optic cable being built from south Florida to the facility in Cuba. The cable is needed to improve Internet access, thereby allowing officials to have improved live video feeds of the military commission proceedings of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In his testimony, Kelly emphasized that the costs of running Guantanamo are substantially higher because of its remote location at a U.S. military base on the eastern tip of Cuba.

“Everything that’s built down there is at least twice as expensive,” said Kelly. “So a ten-penny nail costs 20 cents. So, everything is more expensive. So we have to take care of the barracks. We have to replace the dining hall…It’s literally falling apart.

“And there’s other projects…none of them have to do with creature comforts for the detainees. They’re already living humanely and comfortably, acknowledging the fact they’re in jail.”

U.S. military officials confirmed Thursday that a guard at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay last January fired a "non-lethal round" to disperse detainees after one of them sought to climb a fence and others threw rocks at the guard tower.

No one was injured during the incident, which appears to be the first shooting involving rubber bullets in the 11-year history of the Guantanamo facility. Nonetheless, it has fueled claims by defense lawyers – denied by camp officials – that the  detainees have been engaged for weeks in widespread protests, including hunger strikes and refusing to sleep in their cells.

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The conflicting claims about conditions come as the detention facility in Cuba – which began under President George Bush in 2002 – is once again in the spotlight. Congressional Republicans, led by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, on Thursday sharply criticized the Obama administration for flying the recently captured Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden's son in law, to New York to stand trial in federal court rather than sending him to Guantanamo.

Al-Qaida spokesman and bin Laden son-in-law captured

“When it comes to people like this ... we want them to go to Gitmo to be held in military custody for interrogation purposes," Graham said in a news conference.

But Obama administration officials say they have ruled out sending any more terror suspects to Guantanamo because it would undercut their intention to shut down the facility. On his first full day in office in January 2009, President Barack Obama vowed to close Guantanamo, but he has been blocked from doing so by Congress, leaving most of the 166 detainees remaining there in perpetual limbo – even though at least 55 of them have been publicly cleared for release by an administration task force consisting of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The shooting incident, first reported by the Miami Herald, occurred on the grounds of a new $744,000 soccer and recreation field that was opened last year and touted by base officials as an example of new and more permissive conditions at the facility. The new soccer field was featured in an NBC News report on Guantanamo last June.

Read more at The Isikoff Files

Navy Capt. Robert Durand, chief public affairs spokesman at Guantanamo, told NBC News in an email that on the afternoon of Jan. 2, the incident occurred "after a detainee attempted to climb the fence" in the new recreation field and a "small crowd of detainees began throwing rocks at the guard tower."

"After repeated warnings were ignored, the guard force was forced to employ appropriate crowd-dispersal measures, in accordance with standard operating procedures," Durand wrote.

In response to follow-up questions, Durand said that the measures involved the shooting of a "non-lethal round" consisting of "several small rubber balls with limited ability to penetrate skin and little ability to cause injury." One of these balls "hit a detainee," he added. (During a May 2006 disturbance at Guantanamo, guards fired pepper spray at detainees, Durand said.) 

Information only began to emerge in recent weeks when some of the detainees began informing their lawyers – whose communications with their clients are tightly regulated. One detainee, Bashir al-Marwalah, wrote his New York lawyers in a letter received  Feb. 22: "We are in danger. One of the soldiers fired on one of the brothers a month ago. Before that, they send the emergency forces with M-16 weapons into one of the brothers' cell blocks."

The letter, a copy and translation of which was obtained by NBC News,  further alleged that a copy of the Quran had been "desecrated" during a search the day before and that guards were going from "cell block to cell block" and taking away detainee possessions.

"Now they want to return us to the darkest days under Bush. They said this to us. Please do something." the letter stated. It then concluded: "We asked that this be announced to the media so that people know what the Obama administration is doing to prisoners now. All the brothers are now on a hunger strike in protest of mistreatment and the desecration of the Quran."

The claims in the letter have been echoed in the last few days by lawyers for other detainees , who have said their clients have told them about large-scale  hunger strikes – with some detainees "losing consciousness" and "coughing up blood."  The claims of widespread hunger strikes have been vigorously denied by Guantanamo officials, who say there are now seven who are doing so – about the same number as have for the past year. 

Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said she spoke to one of her clients, Ghaleb Al-Bihani, also a Yemeni, by phone this week and he said he has refused food for a month.  "He's dropped 23 pounds, he’s a diabetic, and medical staff have told him his life is in danger," Kebriaei said. 

Kebriaei said her client told her that there is now a "mass hunger strike" in Camp 6 – the largest and most permissive of the camps at Guantanamo – and that all but two detainees are participating. In addition, she said,  the detainees are protesting in other ways – by refusing to sleep in their cells, instead taking their mats outside and sleeping there. The trigger for the protests appears to be new restrictions and more comprehensive searches of cell blocks  imposed by the new camp commander, Rear Adm. John Smith.

Durand, the Guantanamo spokesman, disputed the lawyers' claims across the board.

“In broad terms, what we are seeing is a coordinated effort by detainees and their attorneys to take routine camp events and create a false picture of conditions," he wrote in an email. "Every day, to some degree, there are a few hunger strikers, a few detainees who assault or threaten guards. To describe the current conditions in the camp as 'deteriorating' is patently false."

He added: "Detainees, their attorneys, family members and sympathetic organizations routinely attempt to gain sympathy for detainees in the media by initiating and spreading falsehoods regarding conditions of detention, allegations of abuse by guards, denial of medical treatment, abuse of the Quran and reports of mass unrest or hunger striking. These tactics have been employed off and on since Joint Task Force Guantanamo opened in 2002."

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The self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks showed up to court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday wearing a camouflage vest after a judge ruled that the military-style garment would not disrupt the proceedings.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was using his attire to make a political statement, which he coupled with a monologue late in the day’s proceedings to condemn what he called prosecutors "elastic" use of national security to justify its actions.

"The government uses national security as it chooses," the Arabic-speaking Mohammed said through a translator while seated at a defense table. "Many can kill people under the name of national security and torture people in the name of national security."

---

Mohammed was appearing before the military commission for the third day of hearings that will set the ground rules for the trial of the 47-year-old Kuwaiti and four accused co-conspirators accused of planning and aiding hijackers who flew commercial airlines into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing 2,976 people.

All five defendants are charged with terrorism and murder and could be sentenced to death if convicted. The trial is likely more than a year away.

Fashion statement
Mohammed, who has grown a long beard in detention and dyed it with henna, wore the vest over his traditional white tunic and turban. He and a co-defendant had sought to wear camouflage items at their May 5 arraignment, but that request was denied.

At the time, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison said the camouflage might make it harder for the military prison guards to gain control if necessary, suggesting the clothing could create confusion about telling the difference between prisoners and fellow troops.

Earlier coverage of the week's Guantanamo pre-trial hearings:
Tuesday: Hearings for accused Sept. 11 terror planners haggle over rights, secrecy
Monday: 9/11 mastermind, alleged accomplices return to Guantanamo court

In Tuesday’s hearing, Military Judge Army Col. James Pohl dismissed the suggestion that the more than a dozen military members in the courtroom would have any problem distinguishing the bearded defendants. But just to be sure, he specifically prohibited them from wearing any items from U.S. military uniforms.

Mohammed considers himself a prisoner of war and wanted the same right to wear a uniform as the Japanese and German troops prosecuted for war crimes after World War II, according to his lawyers.

Mohammed surprised the courtroom midway through the afternoon by raising his hand to request that the court allow him to make a statement.

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com 

Judge Pohl said defendants are not generally permitted to comment on proceedings, but then granted his request.

"This is a one-time occurrence," Pohl told the defendant after some some back-and-forth.

"We are all human beings," Mohammed said in his brief monologue. "Your blood is not made out of gold and ours is made out of water."

He said that while Americans were sad that 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, the U.S. government has "killed millions of people."

He urged the judge not to be persuaded by the government's "crocodile tears," and he complained that the U.S. president can "legislate" assassinations in the name of protecting Americans.

Battle over secrecy 
Earlier Wednesday, the court resumed hearing arguments on the admissibility of testimony that includes information about the period of detention and harsh interrogation techniques employed at secret CIA prisons, before the men's transfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

The government has already acknowledged some details about the secret prisons, including the fact that Mohammed was subjected to a near-drowning technique called water-boarding 183 times, but prosecutors have said that restrictions are necessary to prevent the release of information that would reveal information about intelligence sources and methods.

ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi picked up where she left off Tuesday when court adjourned, arguing that the detention information should be part of the public record.

Shamsi said the restrictions were overly broad and intended not to protect national security so much as to prevent the public from learning more details about the harsh confinement of the defendants in the CIA's prisons overseas.

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"We are aware, your honor, of no other protective order that is as radical as what the government is asking you to judicially bless here," Shamsi said.

But government prosecutor Joanna Baltes said the ACLU and other critics of the proposed rules are exaggerating the restrictions. She said the restrictions, known as protective orders, are similar to those in major terrorism cases in civilian courts.

"I think it is a very inflammatory allegation for the ACLU to come in and claim they have never seen anything like this," Baltes said.

The painstaking pre-trial hearings are intended to deal with 25 motions, many of them dealing with security rules and defendants’ rights.

On Monday, the court agreed that the defendants could not be forced to attend the pre-trial hearings.

At Wednesday’s hearings, Mohammed, who was born in Kuwait, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, a Pakistani, were the only two of the five who attended. Mustafa Al Hawsawi, a Saudi; and Walid Bin Attash and Ramzi Binalshibh, both from Yemen, sat this one out.

Hearings were slated to continue on Thursday morning.

The Associated Press and NBC News' Courtney Kube and Kari Huus contributed to this report.

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The military tribunal of 9/11 terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators resumed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on Tuesday, plunged into arguments over one of the thorniest subjects that the court must iron out before the trial — whether the suspects can talk about their detention and harsh interrogation in secret CIA prisons prior to their transfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

The men are accused of planning and providing logistical support for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Mohammed and the other four who are portrayed as his underlings face charges that include terrorism and murder, and they could be sentenced to death if convicted.

This week’s proceedings hear arguments on 25 pretrial motions dealing mainly with privacy issues and the detainees' rights, and set the ground rules for the trial which is likely at least a year away.

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Prosecutors have asked the judge to approve what is known as a protective order intended to prevent the release of classified information during trial.

The gag order prohibits mention of what the defendants experienced or learned during their interrogation because the tactics used on them were classified.

The defense argued that the government gave up the right to keep interrogation tactics classified when they exposed the defendants to the process.

They mainly object to one portion of the order, which says that, "Any statements made by the accused are presumptively Classified Information." The defense teams believe that that is too broad a statement, and that there is no such thing as "presumptive classification" — that information is classified or not.

The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, pushed back on their argument, saying that both sides agree with the definition of what is classified and what is not, and that the attorneys are required not to disclose new information they deem could be classified.

"We're not talking about what you had for lunch today," Pohl said.

But an attorney for Ramzi Binalshibh argued that issues just that mundane do become a hindrance, citing an example from defending another detainee.

After several hours of arguments against the protective order, the judge did not rule on the motion to strike the gag order Tuesday.

First Amendment appeal
Instead, Pohl moved on to hear arguments from First Amendment attorney David Schulz, on behalf of 14 U.S. news organizations seeking to report on legal proceedings at Guantanamo — classified information or not. 

Schulz argued that the gag order should be lifted because the information about what happened to the defendants during their interrogations has been widely reported in the media.

"The New York Times is not a classification authority," Pohl shot back, saying that just because something is reported in the news or widely known doesn't mean it's now unclassified.

Schulz argued that the use of the 40-second delay switch also violates the First Amendment, but Pohl dismissed that, as well, saying that the switch can prevent the release of classified information that is inadvertently disclosed.

ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi was next to argue for more open proceedings, saying that when issues such as rendition and torture are under discussion, the public has a right to know about it.

Shamsi added that the public should be able to determine for themselves whether punishment is justified, the decide on the lawfulness of government actions with the defendants, and the overall fairness and legitimacy of these proceedings.

The judge stopped her there, saying the court would recess for the day to respect the defendants right to afternoon prayers.

The court will take up this argument again at 9am Wednesday, when the ACLU attorney will continue her arguments.

Last minute boycott
All five of the men were at Monday’s hearings, but on Tuesday, Mohammed, Saudi defendant Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Pakistani national Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali all bowed out. Walid Bin Attash and Ramzi Binalshibh, both from Yemen, did attend.

Mohammed, who has previously claimed he was the mastermind of the terrorist attacks, was taken from his cell at the U.S. base in Cuba to a holding cell outside the courtroom, then chose to boycott at the last minute, said a Navy officer whose name was not released by the court for security reasons.

He did not give a reason for sitting out the Tuesday hearing, but on Monday he dismissed the military tribunal with scorn, saying "I don't think there is any justice in this court."

Pohlruled Monday that the defendants have the right to be absent from this week's pretrial hearings, but said they would have to attend the trial.

The chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, had argued that the rules for the special war-time tribunals known as military commissions required the defendants to attend all sessions of the court.

But lawyers for the men disagreed, arguing that the threat of being forcibly removed from their cells would be psychologically damaging for men who had been brutalized while held during their captivity by the CIA.

Read more on Monday's hearing

The U.S. government has acknowledged that the defendants were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" which in some cases included the simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.

"Our clients may believe that ... 'I don't want to be subjected to this procedure that transports me here, brings up memories, brings up emotions of things that happened to me,'" said Jim Harrington, who represents Binalshibh.

Harrington's statement elicited groans from a small group of family members of Sept. 11 victims who were chosen by lottery to view the proceedings at Guantanamo.  A few other families watched the proceedings on closed-circuit TV from U.S. military bases in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland.

Defendant dress code
Also on Tuesday, the court dealt with what the detainees are allowed to wear in court.

The attorney for Mohammed, U.S. Army Capt. Jason Wright, explained that his client wants to wear a military-style camouflage vest over his traditional attire. He argued that Mohammad wore military-style clothing when fighting against the Soviets for the U.S. government in Afghanistan, so he has a right to do so in this courtroom, as well. Not allowing him to wear it undermines his presumption of innocence, the attorney argued.

Pohl said that the defendants would not be permitted to come into court in a complete U.S. Army uniform, but, he would not forbid all camouflage.

The five men were arraigned in May, and subsequent hearings were pushed back for various reasons.

A hearing in July was postponed to allow the defendants to observe the holy month of Ramadan. Hearings in August were delayed when an Internet outage left the lawyers unable to access their electronic legal documents. That hearing was later canceled altogether as Tropical Storm Isaac approached.

A hearing scheduled for late September was also delayed because the work space for the defense lawyers was shut down due to a rat infestation and mold, which lawyers claimed were making them sick, Reuters reported.

Pohl ruled on Oct. 5 there would be no further postponements to the hearings.

An earlier attempt to try the five men at Guantanamo ended when the Obama administration tried to move the trials to New York City, where two of the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center.

That was abandoned under pressure from Congress and from New Yorkers, and the charges were re-filed in Guantanamo.

NBC News' Kari Huus and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A one-time teen al-Qaida fighter who was also Guantanamo Bay’s youngest prisoner and last Westerner has been transferred to his native Canada on Saturday, the Canadian government confirmed.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Omar Khadr, 26, was flown from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Saturday on a U.S. government plane and transferred to Millhaven maximum-security prison in Bath, Ontario.

Khadr's case has been controversial both in Canada and abroad given his age when he was captured, the nature of his detention and hearing, and the reluctance of Canadian officials to accept his return.

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"I am satisfied the Correctional Service of Canada can administer Omar Khadr’s sentence in a manner which recognizes the serious nature of the crimes that he has committed and ensure the safety of Canadians is protected during incarceration,” Toews said.

A U.S. war crimes tribunal in 2010 sentenced Khadr to 40 years in prison, although he was expected to serve just a few more years under a deal that included his admission he was an al-Qaida conspirator who murdered a U.S. soldier.

Khadr was 15 when he was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan, and has spent a decade at Guantanamo, the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Khadr admitted planting 10 roadside bombs in Afghanistan as part of an al-Qaida cell and throwing a grenade that killed an American special forces medic, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer of Albuquerque, N.M.

Khadr was the first person since World War II to be prosecuted in a war crimes tribunal for acts committed as a juvenile. He was the youngest prisoner still at Guantanamo, but younger boys were previously held there.

Khadr, born in Toronto, was taken to Afghanistan by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, himself a senior al-Qaida member and confidant of Osama Bin Laden.

Bin Laden apprenticed the boy to a group of bomb makers who opened fire when U.S. troops came to their compound. Khadr was captured in the firefight, during which he was blinded in one eye and shot twice in the back.

In a written statement, Toews said Canada received Khadr's application for transfer from the United States on April 13. He said U.S. officials assured Canada it would receive a videocopy of an interview with Khadr, but it, along with other videos of interviews and unedited reports, was not sent until this month.

Former Canadian Ambassador Gar Pardy, however, said Canada's Conservative government -- which cultivates an image of being tough on crime -- dragged out the transfer.

"I think the government was mainly very mean-spirited in how it handled the case," Pardy said to CTV News.

Toews said he continues to be concerned that Khadr "idealizes" his father and denies Ahmed Khadr's association with al-Qaida. The Canadian public safety minister said he is also troubled by how "radicalized" Khadr has become from his time in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Guantanamo Bay.

“From the age of 15 to 26, he has been in some kind of jail, incarcerated. He has had no normal adolescent development at all,” CBC’s Susan Ormiston told CBC News.

Khadr's defense team and human rights groups had argued he was a "child soldier" who should have been sent home long ago for rehabilitation and challenged the notion that a battlefield killing amounted to a war crime.

Khadr was prohibited under the deal from calling witnesses at his sentencing hearing that would support defense claims that he was a "child soldier," forced into fighting the U.S. by a radical father who was an associate of bin Laden.

Khadr's sentence will expire on Oct. 30, 2018.

The U.S. Department of Defense also confirmed Saturday that it transferred Khadr to Canada, leaving 166 detainees at Guantanamo.

In the 2008 presidential election campaign, President Barack Obama promised to close the Guantanamo prison during his term, but that pledge has gone unfulfilled amid security concerns and opposition from Congress, which enacted laws making it more difficult to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo.

Reuters contributed to this report. 

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The Guantanamo detainee found dead in his prison cell last weekend had been cleared for  release three years ago by an Obama administration task force that concluded that his detention was no longer necessary, NBC News has learned. 

The disclosure that the detainee, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 32-year-old Yemeni citizen, had been approved for repatriation could raise new questions about the handling of his case and those of scores of others held in Gitmo who also have been cleared for release. Instead, the detainees remain stuck in legal limbo in the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists with no prospect for getting out any time soon.  

A special Obama administration task force review found in 2009 that Latif, who had been held at Gitmo since early 2002 and had waged a long legal battle for his freedom, could be released, a conclusion that could only be reached by a unanimous vote of all U.S. intelligence agencies. 

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That finding was buttressed a year later when U.S. Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that the U.S. government's initial evidence that Latif had links to al-Qaida and the Taliban was "unconvincing."  Despite both findings, the Obama administration appealed the ruling --  because it did not want to return him to Yemen, a country it viewed as too unstable. 

That stance provoked criticism from human rights groups. At the time of Latif's death, Amnesty International was about to launch an international campaign calling for his freedom, according to David Remes, who headed a legal team that represented Latif. 

"Adnan spent more than ten years in Guantanamo-- nearly a third of his life -- but like most Guantanamo detainees, he was never charged with a crime or accused of violating any law," Remes said in a statement released Tuesday. 

He  "endured great suffering at Guantanamo -- physical and spiritual -- and lived in constant torment" but "could see no end to his confinement,"  it said.  "However he died, Adman's death is a reminder of the injustice of Guantanamo and the urgency of closing the prison." 

Remes told NBC News Tuesday that Latif had been “in despair” over his plight and had told him he would take any opportunity he could to commit suicide. He also said that Latif had been heavily sedated by guards there.

In a statement on its website Tuesday, Amnesty International USA called Latif’s death, “a tragic reminder of the numbing cruelty of the USA’s indefinite detention regime at its Guantánamo Bay detention facility, and the urgent need to resolve the detentions.” 

Latif's death is the ninth at Gitmo since the U.S. prison for terrorists opened in January 2002 and the third since last year. The case is now the subject of an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Military officials say that Latif, who had no serious medical problems, was found unconscious and unresponsive in his cell at Camp 5 on Saturday afternoon. After efforts to revive him failed, he was rushed to a hospital at the base and pronounced dead. An autopsy was conducted on Sunday, but the results have not yet been released.

Military officials say that Latif had been a disciplinary problem: He had been on a hunger strike that he ended in June and recently had hurled a "cocktail" of food and bodily fluids at guards, causing him to be placed in a special disciplinary cell in Camp 5, where he was isolated from other detainees.

But Remes said that Latif had ample grievances. Pentagon officials had first recommended he be released from Gitmo as early as 2004, but he was caught up in seemingly endless legal battles over the status of detainees. He was brought to the prison in early 2002 after being turned over to Pakistani police to the U.S. military following the invasion of Afghanistan. Latif had said he suffered from brain injuries as a result of an auto accident in Yemen and had gone to Pakistan for free medical help.

U.S. military officials originally claimed that he had been encouraged to leave Yemen by an al-Qaida facilitator named “Abu Khalud” and had received military training at a camp in Afghanistan. But Judge Kennedy noted in his ruling that there was no corroborated evidence that Latif ever met Khalud and that Defense Department officials had previously concluded that Latif  “is not known to have participated in combatant/terrorist training.”

In letters from Gitmo, Latif repeatedly asserted his innocence.  “This prison is a piece of hell that kills everything, the spirit, the body, and kicks away all the symptoms of health from them,” he wrote in one letter that was widely cited by human rights advocates.

Noting President Barack Obama's one-time pledge to close Gitmo, Remes said: "The only detainees who have been released from Gitmo in the last two years have been in caskets."

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LONDON -- British police will examine allegations that U.K. intelligence officials were complicit in the alleged torture of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

It could lead British detectives to ask the U.S. government for permission to interview Shaker Aamer at the detention center in Cuba.

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Aamer's case is one of three that are to be considered by detectives with London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). The investigations are understood to include allegations against officials with Britain's MI6 and MI5 intelligence services. 

The decision was made by a joint Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Metropolitan Police panel. Earlier this year, the panel decided detectives should investigate claims of British involvement in the ill treatment of two Libyan men and their families.

How I see America, from a former Gitmo prisoner

Aamer is the last remaining British national held at Guantanamo Bay. He says that he has been subjected to torture including sleep deprivation, stress positions and other forms of mistreatment.

The allegation is that British officials visited him, or asked questions, while aware of his treatment.

More UK coverage from NBC partner ITV News

Aamer is a Saudi Arabian citizen but is a legal permanent resident of the U.K. He is married to a British woman with four children living in London.

He was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and taken to Guantanamo Bay, he has never been put on trial there. He has long been cleared for release, according to the charity Reprieve.

His U.S.-based lawyer Cori Crider told NBC News: "This is a positive development. What has happened to Shaker was appalling and we look forward to cooperating with the police."

'Tortured' Gitmo prisoner seeks release of secret videos

In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service said: "On January 12, 2012, the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] announced that a joint CPS and MPS scoping panel would convene to assess a number of allegations of complicity to torture made against British officials.

"The panel has now had the opportunity to sit and, having assessed 12 cases, it has referred three to the MPS to consider further investigation. The MPS has decided to undertake further investigation into these three cases.

"Legal representatives for those making the allegations are aware of the panel's assessments and officers from the MPS are seeking, where possible, to meet with those that have made allegations in order to explain the individual decisions."

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A new lawsuit seeks to force the U.S. government to make public “extremely disturbing” videotapes of a Saudi national whose abuse at the Guantanamo Bay prison has been called “torture” by a former Bush administration official.

The suit, filed in New York federal court on Monday, comes 10 years after the first prisoners in the United States’ global war on terror arrived at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. The prison, within a U.S. Navy base, was considered by Bush administration lawyers outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

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The controversial prison was ordered closed within a year by President Barack Obama when he took office, but stiff resistance in Congress over housing detainees in the United States and trying them in civilian courts has left most of 171 detainees in limbo as the base remains open.

Indeed, 46 of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay have been designated as too dangerous to be released at all by the Obama administration and have been assigned for indefinite detention without charges or trial. Through the years, 779 detainees have been incarcerated there with Bush releasing more than 500 and Obama 67.

“Sadly, Guantanamo is becoming a fixture,” Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has helped defend detainees, told msnbc.com. “We come to think that during wartime that there are these blips of decreased civil liberties, but eventually we restore ourselves to normalcy. That dynamic 10 years on is not happening now. …The president who so eloquently criticized it has accepted its existence.”

The Obama administration disputes that characterization. A State Department spokesman told NBC News that it has made clear that closing Guantanamo is in the interest of national security and is continuing its efforts to close the facility.

Benjamin Wittes, of the conservative-leaning Brookings Institute, has suggested that Guantanamo has changed since the Bush years.

"Alone among facilities used by the military to detain enemy forces in the war on terror," Wittes wrote, "detentions at Guantanamo are supervised by the federal courts in probing habeas corpus cases. Detainees there, unlike at any other detention facility, have access to lawyers. Their cases are followed closely by the press, and many hundreds of journalists have been to Guantanamo."

Harsh interrogation techniques
In their lawsuit filed Monday, Lawrence Lustberg and Sandra Babcock seek to shed light on the treatment of their client Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was captured in Afghanistan during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in 2001 and was whisked to Guantanamo Bay, where government investigators later identified him as a man who had planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The case of Qahtani first came to light in 2005 when Time magazine published secret log files from Guantanamo that detailed harsh interrogation techniques on the Saudi suspect.

In February 2008, he was charged with war crimes and murder, but on May 11 of that same year those charges were dropped. The reasons at the time were not made public.

• Slideshow: Life goes on in Guantanamo

In 2009, a Bush administration official revealed the reason to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post:

"We tortured Qahtani," Susan J. Crawford said. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

Now, Qahtani's attorneys, who have been to Guantanamo, seek to shine more light on what happened nearly a decade ago.

"It’s important at this juncture for the public to have access to visual images of what happened at Guantanamo,” Babcock told msnbc.com. “I think people have become desensitized to the plight of the men that came to Guantanamo. They don’t see them as human anymore. It’s easy to distance yourself to what happened."

• From Oct. 2006: Battle over tactics raged at Gitmo

The tapes remain classified, according to Lustberg and Babcock, but the lawyers have viewed them and say the government should release them.

"I can’t tell you what’s in the tapes," Babcock told msnbc.com, citing their secrecy. "But I can tell you that they are extremely disturbing and I think they could change the tenor of the debate in this country about our nation’s interrogation and detention practices."

Lustberg points out that "the Army field manual still allows our government to engage in some of the same abuse that was visited on Qahtani. We think that when this sort of thing goes on, detainee abuse should continue to be a robust debate."

The lawsuit says Qahtani's treatment included severe sleep deprivation, 20-hour interrogations and isolation. It also cites threats by military dogs, exposure to extreme temperatures and religious and sexual humiliation.

A spokeswoman for government lawyers told The Associated Press that there would be no comment. 

Other cases at Guantanamo are still pending. Five prisoners accused of helping to organize the Sept. 11 case are expected to be arraigned at the base in 2012 in what would be the most high-profile U.S. war crimes tribunal since the World War II-era. The five, including the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are facing charges that include murder and could be sentenced to death if convicted.

There is no judge yet in the Sept. 11 case.

 

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