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Guantanamo protest spreads
29/05/2006 20:23 - (SA)
Miami - Seventy-five prisoners at the United States naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, were on a hunger strike on Monday, joining some prisoners who have refused food and been force-fed since August.
A spokesperson for the Guantanamo prison, Robert Durand, said the hunger strike was an attempt by the prisoners to gain media attention and pressure the US to release 460 men, held in Guantanamo as enemy combatants.
Durand said prisoners at the naval base were counted as hunger strikers if they missed nine consecutive meals, and most of the 75 hit that mark on Sunday.
Most were refusing food, but continued to drink liquids, he said.
Durand said one of the hunger strikers was being force-fed through a tube inserted through his nose and into his stomach - as were three others who had been on a hunger strike since August 8.
The US has detained prisoners, suspected of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, on the US base in southeast Cuba since 2002.
Durand said the current hunger strike at the base was timed to a series of hearings scheduled for June by the US war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo. The hearings are formally called commissions.
Two detainees attempt suicide
"This new hunger strike is likely a co-ordinated, but short-term, effort designed to coincide with the military commissions hearings scheduled for the next several weeks, as defence attorneys and media normally travel to Guantanamo to observe this process," said Durand.
He said the hunger strikes might also be related to an incident in which two detainees tried to commit suicide by overdosing on hoarded medicine on May 18.
Several others attacked guards, who had rushed into a communal barracks to stop an attempted hanging that US officials later determined to be a ruse.
The two who overdosed were expected to recover and remained under observation at a hospital inside the detention camp, said Durand.
"They are alert, talking, walking and recovering," he said.
Human rights groups have long criticised the indefinite detention of foreign captives at Guantanamo by the US.
US President George W Bush said recently that he would like to close Guantanamo, but administration officials said many of those held at the naval base were "dangerous men who should remain locked up somewhere", if not at Guantanamo.
- Reuters
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