Pardiss Kebriaei the American Senior Staff Attorney at the Center Constitutional Rights focusing on challenging government abuses post-9/11, including in the areas of “targeted killing“ and unjust detentions at Guantanamo has been interviewed by Amy Goodman for Democracy Now in reference to the Guantanamo prisoner hunger strike. In the interview Kebriaei states “…there is a large-scale hunger strike in Camp 6, which is the largest of the facilities at Guantánamo. That prison holds about 130 men. He said that almost everyone, except for a few who are sick and elderly, are on strike. He himself [her client Ghaleb Al-Bihani] had lost over 20 pounds. He is a diabetic. His blood glucose levels are fluctuating wildly. He told me that medical staff at Guantánamo have told him his life is in danger. And he and others want us to get the word out about this. We [at] CCR and group of other habeas counsel, wrote a letter to the authorities at Guantánamo and to the Department of Justice reporting what we have heard and asking for a response. And to date, almost two weeks later, we have not heard anything, other than denials of the strike.  …They have downplayed the scale of the strikes and have said that there are only a handful on strike and only a handful being tube-fed. It may be a matter of semantics: The way that Guantánamo authorities define people on  hunger strike is largely discretionary. But what we have heard from every habeas counsel who has been down to the base or communicated with their clients since February is the same, which is that there is a large-scale strike, men are refusing food. …you start seeing things like loss of vision, loss of hearing, and eventually death. So this is—it’s an emergency situation. We view it as an emergency situation. And denials by the authorities, at this point, of the strike are dangerous and irresponsible.”  Inspired by Amy Goodman & Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now ow.ly/jBcHz Image source CFR ow.ly/jBcGy They downplayed scale of the hunger strikes (April 21 2013)

Pardiss Kebriaei the American Senior Staff Attorney at the Center Constitutional Rights focusing on challenging government abuses post-9/11, including in the areas of “targeted killing“ and unjust detentions at Guantanamo has been interviewed by Amy Goodman for Democracy Now in reference to the Guantanamo prisoner hunger strike. In the interview Kebriaei states “…there is a large-scale hunger strike in Camp 6, which is the largest of the facilities at Guantánamo. That prison holds about 130 men. He said that almost everyone, except for a few who are sick and elderly, are on strike. He himself [her client Ghaleb Al-Bihani] had lost over 20 pounds. He is a diabetic. His blood glucose levels are fluctuating wildly. He told me that medical staff at Guantánamo have told him his life is in danger. And he and others want us to get the word out about this. We [at] CCR and group of other habeas counsel, wrote a letter to the authorities at Guantánamo and to the Department of Justice reporting what we have heard and asking for a response. And to date, almost two weeks later, we have not heard anything, other than denials of the strike.  …They have downplayed the scale of the strikes and have said that there are only a handful on strike and only a handful being tube-fed. It may be a matter of semantics: The way that Guantánamo authorities define people on  hunger strike is largely discretionary. But what we have heard from every habeas counsel who has been down to the base or communicated with their clients since February is the same, which is that there is a large-scale strike, men are refusing food. …you start seeing things like loss of vision, loss of hearing, and eventually death. So this is—it’s an emergency situation. We view it as an emergency situation. And denials by the authorities, at this point, of the strike are dangerous and irresponsible.”

 

Inspired by Amy Goodman & Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now ow.ly/jBcHz Image source CFR ow.ly/jBcGy