A MASS hunger strike is being waged by inmates in America’s Cuban Guantanamo Bay concentration camp, against being transferred into ‘maddening’ new isolation units.
Thirteen detainees are currently reported to be refusing food in protest at being transferred into the new 38 million dollar (£19 million) ‘Camp Six’ unit.
America has made it known that when a prisoner is on hunger strike at the camp, he is monitored constantly and force-fed twice a day, by being strapped into a restraint chair and having a plastic tube inserted through his nose.
It is reported that 160 Guantanamo inmates have been transferred to the Camp Six units, which are windowless cells with steel walls, where prisoners are locked inside for 23-hours-a-day.
Formerly, inmates were held in crowded mesh cages where they could see and hear other prisoners.
Detainee’s lawyer Joshua Colangelo-Bryan said of the transfer to the Camp Six units: ‘This is an entirely new and barren existence.
‘The great majority of detainees are being held in complete and maddening isolation.’
Amani Deghayes’s 37-year-old brother Omar, has been held at Guantanamo for over four years.
He was detained in Pakistan in 2002 before subsequent rendition to Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
His family, who are officially recognised refugees from Libya, allege that he has been tortured by US guards in Guantanamo.
Amani told News Line yesterday: ‘We don’t know whether Omar is involved in the hunger strike or not.
‘He hasn’t been able to see his lawyer and that’s the only way we find out what he’s doing.
‘Obviously it’s terrible news. The information that comes out is always horrific.
‘The prisoners are the ones who are suffering most from hunger strikes, but it’s the only way they can do anything, it’s the only way they have of showing some kind of protest.’
Amnesty International UK Guantanamo campaigner Sara Mac Neice said: ‘Only last week we expressed serious concern at the fact that 80 per cent of Guantanamo prisoners are being kept in harsh solitary confinement conditions, and we are worried that hunger strikers protesting at these conditions will themselves be dealt with punitively.
‘The US authorities should immediately stop pushing people to the edge with extreme isolation techniques and allow proper access for independent medical experts and human rights groups.
‘The entire process at Guantanamo is a travesty of justice and we need to see an end to the use of solitary confinement, an abandonment of unfair “military commission” trials and for all detainees to receive a proper civilian trial or be safely released.’
