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The start of military trials of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is imminent, the Pentagon's chief prosecutor said on Thursday, while defending a rule allowing the U.S. government to monitor conversations between the defendants and their lawyers. President Bush in 2001 authorized the first U.S. military commission trials of wartime prisoners since World War II. On July 3, Bush designated six foreign captives as eligible for such trials. The Pentagon refused to identify them. "I think it's safe to say our start is imminent, soon," Army Col. Frederic Borch, named by the Pentagon to lead the prosecution,...

FOUR prisoners have tried to kill themselves in the past three weeks at the US Defence Department's Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorist suspects, officials have revealed. They add to the 10 attempts last year at the high-security prison, built at a US Naval base in Cuba. US military health teams in Cuba were "paying particularly close attention" to the problem, Pentagon spokeswoman Barbara Burfeind said. The rights group Amnesty International has previously protested the prolonged detention and the uncertainty detainees face about their future, saying it may cause physical and psychological harm. Some of the men have been held for...

Two people suspected of being part of the ricin terror plot were teenage asylum seekers. The pair lived in the flat where the killer toxin was found in Wood Green, north London They were housed there by a local council while they waited for their asylum applications to be processed. They are both aged only 16 or 17 - one was from Algeria and the other from Ethiopia. A total of seven men in their teens, 20s and 30s continue to be questioned. The two terror suspects were housed by Islington Council in north London. A spokesman for the council...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union justice ministers endorsed on Thursday a landmark deal which will allow the EU's law enforcement agency Europol and U.S. agencies to swap personal details on crime and terrorist suspects. The agreement will allow the United States access to information held by Europol, which gathers police intelligence from all 15 EU states, saving agencies like the FBI from having to ask individual states for data on suspects. The move is part of the bloc's post-September 11 pledge to support the U.S.-led fight against terrorism and will supplement an existing accord under which Europol and U.S. agencies...

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Four men believed linked to al-Qaida went on trial Monday on charges of plotting attacks on U.S. targets across Europe, the first terrorist case before a Dutch court since crackdowns following Sept. 11. Two Algerians, a Frenchman and a Dutchman are accused of running a terrorist support network out of a Rotterdam apartment to assist in strikes against the American Embassy in Paris and a military base in Belgium where U.S. munitions are stored. Prosecutors said the suspects were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, membership in a criminal organization and forging documents, passports and credit...

Men detained as terror suspects may return to Miami hospital Monday, September 23, 2002 Associated Press DAVIE — Three men who were detained as terror suspects on a Florida highway may be allowed to train at the Miami hospital that turned them away shortly after the incident. Altaf Ali, executive director for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said at a Saturday conference that an agreement was reached last week to let the medical students study at Larkin Community Hospital. Ali had arranged for attorneys to help the men — Ayman Gheith, 27, Kambiz Butt, 25, and...