Amy Goodman: Starving for Justice at Guantanamo

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Starving for Justice at Guantanamo

Posted on Mar 13, 2013
By Amy Goodman


Reports are emerging from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay that a majority of the prisoners are on a hunger strike. One hundred sixty-six remain locked up, although more than half of them have been cleared by the Obama administration for release. Yet there they languish (in some cases now in their second decade) in a hellish legal limbo, uncharged yet imprisoned. President Barack Obama’s failure to close Guantanamo, as he boldly promised to do with an executive order signed on Jan. 22, 2009, and the deterioration of conditions at the prison under his watch will remain a lasting stain on his legacy.

From Guantanamo, Yemeni prisoner Bashir al-Marwalah wrote to his lawyer: “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. ... Now they want to return us to the darkest days under Bush. They said this to us. Please do something.”

Al-Marwalah was referring to the first recorded use of rubber bullets being fired at a Guantanamo prisoner by the U.S. military guards there.

According to Pardiss Kebriaei, a senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, her client Ghaleb al-Bihani is one of the Guantanamo prisoners currently on a hunger strike. She told me Al-Bihani told her that “there is a large-scale hunger strike in Camp 6, which is the largest of the facilities at Guantanamo. That prison holds about 130 men. He said that almost everyone, except for a few who are sick and elderly, is on strike. He had lost over 20 pounds. He is a diabetic. His blood-glucose levels are fluctuating wildly. He told me that medical staff at Guantanamo has told him his life is in danger. And he and others want us to get the word out about this.” ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/starving_for_justice_at_guantanamo_20130313/