Guantanamo detainees 'just skin and bone'

By Tom Clifford, Assistant Editor, International

Dubai : Hunger-striking detainees at Guantanamo have been reduced to skeletal status and are being force fed to keep them alive, Gulf News has learned.
Several are critically ill, and leading rights group Amnesty International says the camp is not properly equipped to deal with the growing crisis.

"The latest information coming from the camp paints a picture of detainees so weak they cannot stand or sit up straight in a chair,'' Daniel Gorevan of Amnesty International said.

Detainees were just "skin and bone, bleary eyed and incoherent", Gorevan who works in Amnesty's American section, said.

"Amnesty International is calling on the US to close the detention facility at Guantanamo, and either give the detainees a fair trial or release them."

Lawyers from the Centre for Constitutional Rights who are representing a number of the hunger strikers complained that they were denied access to the camp hospital and that detainees were too weak to stand.

Guantanamo officials were accused of deliberately understating the seriousness of the hunger strike.

"The US military appears to be systematically downplaying the hunger strike in order to avoid international criticism. In July they denied the existence of a hunger strike two weeks after it had started,'' Susan Lee, America's Director at Amnesty International said.

"Now they seem to be understating the number of detainees involved and the gravity of the medical condition of several of the detainees. This policy once again demonstrates the lack of transparency around all US detention practices and policies in the 'war on terror'."

Even the number of hunger strikers is not being acknowledged by the United States, according to Amnesty.

Lawyers who have visited the notorious detention centre in Cuba claim that up to 210 people are refusing food.

However, the US Department of Defence has put the figure as low as 36.

The discrepancy is due to the definition of a hunger strike.

The US military defines a hunger strike as the refusal of nine consecutive meals within a 72-hour period. Some detainees are refusing all food and are being force fed. Others, Gulf News has learned, are accepting one meal in this timeframe, but then flushing it down the toilet. This is to prevent being man-handled and force fed by guards through nasal gastric tubes, a painful and humiliating operation.

CRITICISM
No compromise on certain principles

Guantanamo has come in for widespread criticism.

In February 2004, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "The military commissions, as presently constituted, would not provide the type of process which we would afford British nationals... The detainees should either be tried in accordance with international standards or they should be returned to the UK."

A few months later, British Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith said: "There are certain principles on which there can be no compromise. Fair trial is one of those which is the reason we in the UK have been unable to accept that the US military tribunals proposed for those detained at Guantanamo offer sufficient guarantees of a fair trial in accordance with international standards."

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