Monday, June 12 2006 11:03 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New York: A senior US military official who oversees the Guantanamo Bay prison, today (June 12, 2006) said a 'vision' might have led to the suicide of three detainees at the detention centre.

Colonel Mike Bumgarner said several inmates told him in May of a vision, or a dream-implicitly a message from God that if three detainees die it will attract enough attention so that they will all get out of Guantanamo.

According to Time magazine, which quoted Bumgarner, there has been at least 41 suicide attempts at camp Delta in the detention facility.

Three Arab detainees at the detention facility committed suicide after midnight on Friday by hanging in their cells using strips of clothes and bedsheets, making them the first set of prisoners to take their lives since the facility formally opened in 2002.

Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris said he believed the acts were coordinated, in part because of the similar method of the deaths and because in the past the three had gone on hunger strikes-acts of defiance that at times have involved up to 130 of the detainees.