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Shaker Aamer: “Guards Using Ramadan to Massage Numbers” on Gitmo Hunger Strike

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When this Charlie Savage story came out yesterday in the New York Times, my spidey senses went all tingly. Something just didn’t feel right:

An American military spokesman said Sunday that 15 detainees at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who had been listed as having gone on hunger strike had quit participating in the protest, accelerating an apparent downward trend since the start of Ramadan last week.

The spokesman, Lt. Col. Samuel House, said in an e-mail that as of Sunday, 81 of the 166 prisoners were still listed as taking part in the hunger strike. That figure was down from 96 on Saturday, 102 on Friday, 104 on Thursday and 106 on Wednesday, the number at which participation in the protest had peaked and plateaued.

Even Savage seemed to realize that given the way head guard John Bogdan has manipulated the prisoners and especially the hunger strikers, there could perhaps be more to this story:

But David Remes, a defense lawyer who represents several Guantánamo detainees in habeas corpus proceedings, expressed skepticism in an e-mail and said he wanted to talk to his clients before drawing any conclusions about what the military was reporting.

“Perhaps the authorities finally made hunger striking such a horrendous experience that some men, at least, are dropping out,” Mr. Remes said. “Perhaps some men feel the hunger strike has achieved its goals by forcing Guantánamo back onto the national agenda and jump-starting the transfer process. There are still other ways to read the numbers. Until we speak with our clients, we can only speculate.”

It turns out that the skepticism is well-founded. From the Guardian:

But lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said his client Shaker Aamer had told him on Friday that guards were using Ramadan to massage the numbers.

“The military are cheating on the numbers as usual. Some detainees are taking a token amount of food as part of the traditional breaking of the fast at the end of each day in Ramadan, so that is now conveniently allowing them to be counted as not striking,” Stafford Smith said.

Aamer – who has been held at Guantánamo for more than 11 years yet never charged – also claimed during a phone call with Stafford Smith that fellow inmates were being punished by being held in isolation during Ramadan if they refused to eat.

Isn’t that interesting? We have flip sides of the same story. Savage informs us that the guards moved prisoners who are no longer participating in the hunger strike back into communal living areas where they can pray together, while Aamer’s take on the same situation suggests that isolation is used a tool to punish those who still refuse to eat.

Considering the history of John Bogdan and the emerging questions over his fitness to retain command of the guard detail at Guantanamo, it is not surprising that Ramadan practices would be used to game the numbers on the hunger strike while continuing to inflict punishment on those who continue the strike.

Remember, the US military has a strong reputation to uphold when it comes to an understanding of the effects of Ramadan fasting and its use as a propaganda tool.

New York Times Runs Powerful Op-Ed By Gitmo Prisoner

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"force-feeding at guantanamo" by Natasha Mayers (under Creative Commons license via flickr)

“force-feeding at guantanamo” by Natasha Mayers (under Creative Commons license via flickr)

With the simple title “Gitmo Is Killing Me”, today’s New York Times carries a chilling first-hand account from a hunger-striking prisoner at Guantanamo. Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel is one of 25 Yemeni prisoners held at Guantanamo who have been cleared for release but are still held because the US feels Yemen is too unstable for the prisoners to return there.

A theme that I keep returning to regarding the hunger strike at Guantanamo is that the military is conducting an information operation to limit damage to its reputation through reducing attention to the harsh treatment guards mete out to the prisoners. That is why, as I pointed out yesterday, Saturday’s operation to shut down the communal areas at the prison and return the prisoners to individual cells was carried out after the ICRC left and at a time when no members of the press were present. With that in mind, the military is very likely to view the publication of this piece as a huge loss of control of the narrative. While they had portrayed the Saturday action as taking place against resistance by the prisoners using “improvised weapons” (a description that was avidly eaten up by the press), Naji’s account of the pain and humiliation of forced feedings changes the focus from violence by the prisoners to violence being visited upon them.

The Times explains that Naji “told this story, through an Arabic interpreter, to his lawyers at the legal charity Reprieve in an unclassified telephone call”. Given previous behavior by the military at Guantanamo, I hope that they do not used their embarrassment over publication of this piece to limit phone calls from prisoners to their attorneys.

Naji explains his situation:

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

Naji is 35 years old, so he has been a prisoner at Guantanamo for nearly a third of his life. He has never been charged. He has never been tried. Is it any wonder that he would give up hope and choose to starve himself to death?

Naji’s account of the forced feedings is horrifying:

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

Most human rights groups object to the practice of forced feedings of hunger striking prisoners. Carol Rosenberg quotes Physicians for Human Rights: Read more →

Military’s Information Operation Against Gitmo Hunger Strike Breaks Down

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It has been clear from the start of the current hunger strike at Guantanamo that the military is carrying out its own information operation against a strike that it views as an information operation carried out by the prisoners. Back on March 17, Carol Rosenberg reported that commercial flights to Guantanamo will be terminated as of Friday of this week, and I asked whether the flights were terminated in order to quash coverage of the strike. Just a few days later, attorneys for Guantanamo prisoners made the same accusation to CNN:

“We are very concerned that the commercial flights have ended at a time when it’s critical to have more regular contact with our clients (not less!) in light of the hunger strikes and their potentially perilous health conditions,” Ranjana Natarajan, one of the lawyers representing Obaydullah, wrote to CNN.

Navy officials said lawyers and others who regularly take the commercial flights from Florida to the base may now take a once-a-week military flight from Andrews Air Force Base just outside of Washington.

But Anne Richardson, also with Hadsell Stormer Richardson & Renick, said the flights “are also capable of being canceled, at the last minute, without warning and at DOD’s discretion.”

David Remes, a Washington-based lawyer who represents 15 clients held at the detention facility, said authorities “are canceling these flights because they want to keep the public in the dark about the mayhem in the prison.”

“For the past several months, bad news has been streaming out of the camps,” Remes said. “The authorities are taking one hit after another for the way they’re running the camps, so they’re doing what comes naturally – choking off the flow of information.”

In that same March 17 report from Carol Rosenberg, we have this statement from Pentagon spokesman Todd Breasseale:

“That there is any concrete, mass hunger strike — that is an utter fabrication,” Breasseale said. “Some who claim to be hunger striking are in fact eating handfuls of trail mix, nuts, and other food. They are taking in plenty of calories.”

Reality is beginning to catch up with Breasseale and the military jailers at Guantanamo. As Rosenberg reported yesterday, the military now admits to 39 hunger strikers (making 23% of the 166 prisoners now held):

At Guantánamo, officials counted nearly a fourth of the captives, 39 of the 166 prisoners, as meeting the minimum U.S. military definition of a hunger striker for having lost enough body weight and skipped at least nine meals in a row. Eleven of the captives were being fed nutritional supplements by tubes snaked up their nose and into their stomach. Two were hospitalized for intravenous drips as well as the tube feedings.

But the military most likely still is lowballing the number of hunger strikers. The next three paragraphs from Rosenberg:

Lawyers for the detainees described a much more dire situation, with one of the best known cleared-for-release captives, Shaker Aamer, telling his attorney on Friday that about 130 of the 166 captives were taking part.

Aamer estimated he had lost 32 pounds, according to Stafford Smith, who quoted him as saying, “You can see the bones in my chest.”

“Shaker understands that one detainee is reportedly 85 pounds, another 107 pounds and a third 117 pounds,” said Clive Stafford Smith, who spoke via a monitored telephone line between the camps and Britain, where Stafford Smith is based.

That there is an ongoing battle over whose reports can be believed is quite clear from Jason Leopold’s thorough article posted yesterday, where we learn that the military is following the same script it used during the last major hunger strike by Guantanamo prisoners: Read more →

Were Commercial Flights to Guantanamo Ended to Cut Off Coverage of Hunger Strike?

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Allegations of abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo have increased since Rear Admiral John W. Smith took over last June.

Allegations of abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo have increased since Rear Admiral John W. Smith took over last June.

Carol Rosenberg reported yesterday that the Navy has ruled that commercial flights to Guantanamo can no longer be provided on a regular basis. The timing of this move strikes me as particularly suspect, since these flights are heavily used by defense counsel for Guantanamo detainees and a large group of these attorneys has banded together to ask newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to address the abuse charges prisoners have cited in instituting a widespread hunger strike at the prison. Guantanamo officials deny that a hunger strike is taking place.

From Rosenberg’s report:

The Guantánamo Navy commander is halting commercial air passenger service from South Florida to the remote outpost in southeast Cuba, invoking a federal regulation that the Pentagon had apparently waived for years.

Fort Lauderdale-based IBC Travel said Friday that it will cease its several times a week service to and from the base after April 5, on an order from Navy Capt. John “JR” Nettleton to discontinue service by May 1. It will continue weekly cargo flights to the base, said IBC spokesman Richard Rose, with permission from Nettleton.

/snip/

The small shuttles that carry about 20 passengers had been a vital air bridge to Guantánamo, especially since the U.S. Supreme Court gave attorneys access to the prisoners in August 2004.

Isn’t it interesting that the Navy would end the waiver that allowed passenger flights but they still elect to maintain the waiver for cargo flights? The attorneys have been especially busy of late, as accusations of improper treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo have begun to accelerate again. The attorneys maintain that a hunger strike has been going on for over a month and that over 100 prisoners are taking part. Guantanamo officials dismiss the bulk of those claims:

Attorneys for detainees long-held without charges at the U.S military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, assert that a general hunger strike involving many of the 166 detainees who remain incarcerated there has entered its second month.

But the U.S. military strongly denies that claim, calling it “a fabrication,” and instead says only 14 detainees are actively engaged in hunger strikes detrimental to their health.

In a letter of concern sent to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Thursday, a group of 51 detainee attorneys wrote, “at least two dozen men have lost consciousness due to low blood glucose levels.” The Pentagon said it was aware of the letter but declined to discuss it.

/snip/

“That there is any concrete, mass hunger strike — that is an utter fabrication,” Breasseale said. “Some who claim to be hunger striking are in fact eating handfuls of trail mix, nuts, and other food. They are taking in plenty of calories.”

Interestingly, Defense Department spokesman Todd Breasseale claims that Guantanamo is following the US Bureau of Prisons protocol for handling hunger strikers, but the document describing the protocol linked to the CBS News account seems to differ from Breasseale’s claims. In the document (pdf) we have this: Read more →