A majority of the 166 detainees remaining at Guantanamo Bay are housed in Camp 6, a facility that until recently held men the military deemed ?compliant.? But the camp, where cell doors are left open so detainees can live communally, has been at the center of a series of escalating protests since January.
The lawyers and human rights advocates said there is a mass hunger strike at Camp 6 that is threatening the health and life of a number of detainees. In a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, they said they have received ?alarming reports? that men have lost ?over 20 and 30 pounds? and that ?at least two dozen men have lost consciousness due to low blood glucose levels.?
A military official said 14 detainees are on hunger strikes and six of them are being force fed. Others have been refusing meals but eating non-perishable food stashed in their cells, officials said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside organization allowed unrestricted visits to the camps, said it visited Guantanamo from Feb. 18 to 23 and ?is aware of the tensions at the detention facility.?
The immediate trigger for the protests was a series of searches in Camp 6 in which detainees alleged that their Korans were desecrated by guards who looked through them.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale said that no member of the guard force ever touches a Koran and that any examination of Korans would be conducted by cultural advisers at Guantanamo, most of whom are Muslim. He also noted that detainees have in the past used their Korans to hide contraband.
Of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo, the administration has said, more than 80 are cleared for release if they can be returned to their home country or resettled in a third country. But Congress has imposed a series of restrictions on transfers out of Guantanamo, which have ground to a halt.
In January, the administration closed the State Department office charged with negotiating the transfer of detainees and accelerating the closure of the facility.
US admits 14 on hunger strike at Guantanamo
The US military admitted Friday that 14 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison can be defined as ?hunger strikers,? while lawyers claim that more than 100 inmates are taking part in the five-week-long protest.
One of the strikers was taken to the prison hospital while five others are being force-fed through tubes, Guantanamo detention center spokesperson Navy Capt. Robert Durand said Friday.
Durand denied that the hunger strike is ?a widespread phenomenon, as alleged,? and said that most of the alleged strikers are skipping regular meals, but substituting them with snacks.
Earlier, 51 lawyers wrote to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel urging him to intervene in a hunger strike at Camp 6, where the majority of Guantanamo prisoners are incarcerated.
The huge disparity in the numbers of strikers reported by the prison staff and by the lawyers is explainable by the fact that the definition of a hunger striker is in the hand of authorities, said one of the lawyers Pardiss Kebriaei.
Tensions in the notorious prison started last month after new US Army soldiers took over guard duties from a Navy force. Some prisoners complained of aggressive searches, which included confiscations of personal items and sacrilegious handling of the Quran.
Durand insisted that all searches are conducted in a regular way, and no mistreatment of Muslim holy books has taken place.
Uncharged Gitmo prisoners go on hunger strike
Over 100 of the 166 Guant?namo prisoners appear to be into at least the second month of the hunger strike, some with serious health risks, investigative journalist Andy Worthington says.
About half of them have been cleared of all charges, yet they are still lingering in this legal limbo, Ms. Worthington stresses.
Pardiss Kebriaei, an attorney for Ghaleb al-Bihani, who is one of the Guant?namo prisoners currently on a hunger strike, said her client confessed there was a large-scale hunger strike in Camp 6, which is the largest of the facilities at Guant?namo. Almost everyone, except for a few who are sick and elderly, is on strike, Kebriaei told reporters.
There are still inmates in Guant?namo Bay who the Obama administration is keeping locked away uncharged, neither as suspected criminals nor as prisoners of war according to the Geneva Convention. Most of them have been put in this high-security prison as enemy fighters. Many have been tortured and horribly abused to coerce intelligence that allegedly saved lives of Americans.
The strike has been almost completely blacked out by US media and started trickling into the limelight over the past few days. Meanwhile, President Obama claimed only six or seven people joined the strike, in what Ms. Worthington says will remain a lasting stain on his legacy, taking into consideration his promise to close the prison back in 2009.
?It is now Obama?s prison,? Ms. Worthington says. ?It is very much a place where he is not doing anything about it... And it seems it is down to the prisoners to make the world aware of this situation.?
The Obama administration denied that it detains people indefinitely. ?The US only detains individuals when that detention is lawful, and does not intend to hold any individual longer than necessary,? Michael Williams, a senior adviser for Guant?namo policy, said.
Andy Worthington believes this situation can be put right by continuous reporting on it. She also called on governments in an interview to Russia Today to put pressure on the US and make it free prisoners.
Voice of Russia, Guardian, RT, The Washington Post
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