{"id":3722,"date":"2008-06-07T00:43:20","date_gmt":"2008-06-06T23:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/mohamed-hunger-strikes-to-protest-guantanamo-charges\/3722\/"},"modified":"2008-06-07T00:45:47","modified_gmt":"2008-06-06T23:45:47","slug":"mohamed-hunger-strikes-to-protest-guantanamo-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/mohamed-hunger-strikes-to-protest-guantanamo-charges\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunger strike as protest to Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo charges"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gitmo2.jpg\"By Andy Worthington<\/a> | This has been a disturbing week for British resident and Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, who endured two and a half years of torture at the hands of Pakistani agents, the CIA<\/span>, and the United States\u2019 proxy torturers in Morocco, before being transferred to Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo in September 2004.<\/p>\n

Last Friday, it was revealed<\/a> that he was to face a trial by Military Commission at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo \u2013 the \u201cterror courts\u201d invented by Dick Cheney and his advisers in November 2001, which are empowered to conceal classified information from the defendants and, at the judge\u2019s discretion, to accept \u201cevidence\u201d obtained through coercion. This is, of course, particularly worrying in Binyam\u2019s case, as every shred of the so-called evidence against him appears to have been extracted through torture, and would be inadmissible in a courtroom on the US mainland.<\/p>\n

There was some brighter news for Binyam on Tuesday, when a judge, Mr. Justice Saunders, responded positively<\/a> to his lawyers\u2019 request for a judicial review, which, they hope, will require the British government to drop its claim that it is \u201cunder no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted\u201d and that \u201cit is HM Government\u2019s position that \u2026 evidence held by the UK Government that US and Moroccan authorities engaged in torture or rendition cannot be obtained\u201d by Binyam\u2019s lawyers. His lawyers also hope that a favourable decision in the judicial review will compel the government to reveal whatever information it has regarding British knowledge of Binyam\u2019s rendition to torture in Morocco, and information regarding his life in London, which, Binyam says, was presented to him by his Moroccan torturers.<\/p>\n

Today, however, the Independent<\/em> reports<\/a> that Binyam is so distressed by the announcement of the charges against him that he has embarked on a hunger strike. In a letter to foreign secretary David Miliband, his lawyers at Reprieve<\/a>, the legal action charity that provides legal assistance to over 30 Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo prisoners, explain that Binyam \u201cbegan not eating food on May 2, 2008, when he was 146 lbs (10 stone 6 lbs),\u201d but that this went unnoticed, because \u201cthe US military does not count it as a \u2018hunger strike\u2019 if the prisoner does not actually refuse the tray.\u201d On May 18, therefore, when his weight had already dropped to 128 lbs (9 stone 2 lbs), Binyam began refusing the trays.<\/p>\n

Binyam stopped his strike temporarily, when Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve\u2019s director, and Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, his military lawyer, persuaded him to eat during the three days of their visit, but announced that he would resume on May 24. Stafford Smith explained, \u201cUnder the illegal procedures used by the US military in Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo \u2026 they will consider him a \u2018hunger striker\u2019 and start force-feeding him when he reaches about 120 lbs (8 stone 8 lbs). Stafford Smith thought that this might be on June 4 or 5.<\/p>\n

From almost the moment that Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo opened, in January 2002, hunger strikes have been used by the prisoners as the only way to protest the lawless conditions of their confinement \u2013 held without charge, with no family contact, with little or no social interaction, and with no inkling of when, if ever, their imprisonment will come to an end.<\/p>\n

Persistent hunger strikers, however, are made to suffer even more, and are punished by being force-fed, a procedure that is monstrously cruel. Prisoners are strapped into a restraint chair using 16 separate straps \u2013 three across the head alone \u2013 and fed, twice a day, through a tube that is inserted into the stomach through the nose.<\/p>\n

As well as being shockingly painful \u2013 and frequently unhygienic, as the tubes are not always cleaned after each use \u2013 force-feeding is also illegal, as the World Medical Association made clear in its Declaration of Tokyo in 1975: \u201cWhere a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US administration ignores this requirement, as it is unwilling to let prisoners secure what it would regard as a PR victory if they starved themselves to death. Perhaps as a result, four long-term hunger strikers \u2014 three<\/a> in June 2006, and another<\/a> last May \u2013 took the only other action that was available to them, and committed suicide.<\/p>\n

Binyam has not yet reached this state of desperation \u2013 although in a letter<\/a> to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on May 22, he wrote, \u201cI have been next to committing suicide this past while. That would be one way to end it, I suppose.\u201d Nevertheless, as Clive Stafford Smith points out, \u201cThe need for humanitarian intervention on behalf of Mr. Mohamed grows ever more urgent. Because no US court will hear his case, I am powerless to secure him the humane treatment that he needs. The British government is not powerless. It is crucial that this be top of the government\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy is the author of The Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America\u2019s Illegal Prison<\/a><\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Andy Worthington | This has been a disturbing week for British resident and Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, who endured two and a half years of torture at the hands of Pakistani agents, the CIA, and the United States\u2019 proxy torturers in Morocco, before being transferred to Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo in September 2004. Last Friday, it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,16],"tags":[32,33],"class_list":{"0":"post-3722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"category-war-terrorism","8":"tag-cia","9":"tag-guantanamo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}