Guantanamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike After Korans Confiscated
Source: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp are staging a hunger strike to protest the confiscation of personal items, including Korans, in early February, their lawyers and prison officials said Monday.
“My client and other men have reported that most of the detainees in Camp 6 are on strike, except for a small few who are elderly or sick,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, a New York lawyer representing Ghaleb Al-Bihani, a detainee from Yemen.
Camp 6 houses the majority of the 166 detainees still incarcerated at Guantanamo — estimated at about 130 men — who usually don’t pose any disciplinary problems and don’t represent a “value” in terms of information or a particular risk.
Interviewed by AFP, Robert Durand, director of public affairs for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said nine detainees were engaged in hunger strikes, five of whom were being fed through tubes inserted into their stomachs.
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/11/guantanamo-detainees-stage-hunger-strike-after-korans-confiscated/
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Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)
Warpy
(111,332 posts)It would seem to me that religious items should be kept with them to minimize misbehavior.
Whoever ordered these items confiscated has a lot to answer for.
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)the only thing I can think of is that they have too much evidence against the Bush the Bush administration
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)
tammywammy
(26,582 posts)xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)Find out more Inside Gitmo by Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu. A good read.
tblue
(16,350 posts)what are you supposed to do?
Not sure I trust the people running Gitmo to tell me how conditions really are.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)For some people, it looks like he hasn't done that.
"Attorneys for the detainees often exaggerate and promote their clients to hunger strike"? Is that what happened when
Major General Geoffrey Miller issued orders to “Gitomize” Abu Ghraib? Somehow there are those who were exaggerating Abu Ghraib?
And now there are attorneys for the Gitmo detainees who are exaggerating?
In contrast to Colonel Cucullu's book, a June 2009 report entitled Guantánamo's Hidden History, identifies the names of prisoners who should have not been prisoners and were released and the Guantánamo practices which resulted in some of them weighing as little as 87 pounds. http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/guantanamos-hidden-history-shocking-statistics-of-starvation.pdf
Although it is contrary to the policy of the White House, all war criminals should be prosecuted. This includes all higher-ups in military uniforms who would white-wash the criminality to advance their own military careers.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)Spies are taught to use a very common book in the country they are going to as a key to sending coded messages. In many countries this is the bible, for it is easy to find and buy (In Soviet Russia, it was a Russian Translation of Das Capital, for it was easily available in Soviet Russia).
The spies then set up a simple code, for example a number code using what ever book they are using to send messages back home. Thus you use the first book in the bible and write down the number that represent the word in the bible that is the next letter in your message. When the message arrives back home, they get a copy of that same book and count the words. For example 9156 could be the ninth word, followed by the next word, followed by the fifth following word followed by the Sixth following word.
Such a code is simple and hard to break without knowing which book is being used and in the case of the bible, where in the bible is the first word (Did the spy start with Exodus or Geneses, or did the spy start with the New Testament or some other starting point?). The spy and who he or she is sending the message to, know where the spy started in the book, but any spy catcher has to figure that out.
Now with modern computers it is a lot easier to break such codes then it could be done in WWII days. You can type in the Koran and have the computer count the possible messages tell something comes out coherent. Thus easy to break, but it takes time AND suspicion that such messages are being sent.
I suspect the Koran were being used that way the the prisoners themselves. It is NOT a hard system to adopt. Combined with a Morse Code system, messages could be sent a good distance just by knocks or light. As long as no one suspected a code was actually being used the knocks or tapping may appear random or the product of a nervous tick.
Given all of these prisoners had a Koran, it is the perfect book for such activities among themselves. The Guards took away the Koran for such messages were undermining their control over the prisoners. That is the best explanation of this confiscation and I suspect the reason it was done (and to cover up that the messages have been going on for same time before the Guards caught on, thus embarrassing them, for it showed the Prisoner they could out wit the guards).
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)Give different copies of the Koran per day
happyslug
(14,779 posts)Thus you can NOT give them a different Koran, like you can give different translations of the Bible. Most people who own a bible has one that has been translated from the original languages it was written in. Some of the books of the New Testament was written in Greek, others in Aramaic (What the Jews actually spoke at the time of Christ). The old Testament is in ancient Hebrew (Through two books, not in the Protestant bible, but in the Catholic bible is in Greek these are Wisdom and II Maccabees).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_New_Testament )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_New_Testament
Given most people who read the bible do NOT know Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, translations are used, and that can vary depending on the translation.
On the other hand, given that the Koran must be in Arabic, such versions are NOT considered correct by Moslems and thus NOT wanted by them. Technically translating the Koran is NOT forbidden but it is frown upon by Islamic Fundamentalists (Like who we have in Cuba),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)there is more than one copy of the Koran. Like the Bible.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)When the Koran was written punctuation as we now have it punctuations did not yet exist (Charlemagne is considered to be the person who demanded what we call punctuations that is about 120 years later). Thus every book is written in Arabic with no punctuations. Thus there is ONLY one version of the Koran unlike the Bible which is in many languages. Moslems even demand that the language needs NOT be changed in that the Arabic in the Koran is still the Arabic of today (and if there has been any changes the Arabic of the Koran is superior).
Thus there is just one version of the Koran. Now there are translations but these are considered improper and thus NOT wanted by these radical Moslems, what they want is the Arabic version. None of these translations are considered correct. Thus there are only one LEGITIMATE version of the Koran, and it is in the Koran written in Arabic as written down by Mohammad.
This is driven by Islamic doctrine, which unlike the Christian Bible (Which under Christian Doctrine, was "inspired" by God NOT written by God), Islamic Doctrine says the Koran was given to Mohammad by the Arch angel Gabriel directly in the Arabic Language. Thus the Koran is viewed by Moslems as being given DIRECTLY by God via his Archangel, including that it was written in Arabic. Thus Christians and Jews thinks nothing of translating the bible into other languages (and accept that translation errors will crept in, but are off set by error of the original writers). On the other hand Moslems view the Koran as a gift from God himself and that translations to another language, may be helpful, but is also dangerous. The best version of the Koran is the original Arabic version, all others are in error for they are NOT in the original Arabic.
Thus you can NOT compare the Koran with the Bible. Moslems believe all versions of the Koran, other then the Arabic written by Mohammad are less then correct. Furthermore it is the words that can NOT be changed. Thus all Koran in Arabic are the same.
lib2DaBone
(8,124 posts).. the fact that prisons with torture still exist.
There are men in Gitmo that have been there 10 years.... they never committed a crime.. they were rounded up before the war.
Obama promised that he would close that hell hole and end torture...
Instead ....he surged the war, signed NDAA and declared that he has the right to sentence American Citizens to death via Drones.
Obama is NO FRIEND of liberals, the left, or progressives.
I know I will get flamed.. but those are the facts.
xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)tblue
(16,350 posts)I know. It's so disheartening. We have to find another way. This one did not work.
onenote
(42,748 posts)That's a fact too.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)If photos of the men were available, I have no doubt that there would be international uproar about conditions in Guantánamo, but in the absence of photos I’d like to conclude by quoting from a recent article by law professor Scott Horton, who wrote, in his column for Harper’s, that there was an aspect of Muhammad Salih’s death “that US officials are particularly anxious to avoid discussing: it appears to be tied to practices that the Pentagon defends as ‘force-feeding’ but other officials decry as ‘torture.’” He continued:
"Pentagon officials seem extremely eager not to be associated with it or to be quoted defending it, particularly if they are health care professionals. There’s a good reason for that. The techniques do not comply with the international standards for actual force-feeding, established in the World Medical Association’s Malta Declaration of 1991. Instead they have a darker and more distressing progeny. From the use of restraint chairs down to the specific brand of commercial diet supplement used by the doctors, the force-feeding techniques now in use at Guantánamo replicate the methods used by the CIA at black sites under Bush. At the black sites, those methods were not part of any medical regime. Instead, they were a part of a carefully designed torture regime, the very same regime that Obama claims to have abolished in his first executive order." {emphasis added}
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/torture-guantanamo-force-feeding-hunger-strikers
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)Why are Obama's aides failing him by failing to pass along this information to him.
He said that he is opposed to torture. It must be true because he said it himself. Surely, he would take some kind of corretive action if he only knew.
tblue
(16,350 posts)He knows.
onenote
(42,748 posts)Not being snarky -- trying to understand your post.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)...
the U.N. Commission on Human Rights concluded, in a detailed report about Guantánamo in February 2006 (PDF), following an 18-month investigation, that “[t]he excessive violence used in many cases during transportation ... and forced-feeding of detainees on hunger strike must be assessed as amounting to torture,” and it is clear that nothing has changed in the three years since the report was published. ...
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/torture-guantanamo-force-feeding-hunger-strikers
UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. investigation has concluded that the United States committed acts amounting to torture at Guantanamo Bay, including force-feeding detainees ...
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11333496/
Both are worth reading to see what has been done in the name of the United States.
Solly Mack
(90,780 posts)
Judi Lynn
(160,601 posts)Guantánamo hunger strike much bigger than reported, rights group claims
Pentagon accused of 'not admitting scale and scope' of strike, with reports of 130 inmates protesting mistreatment of Qur'ans
Paul Harris in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 March 2013 16.09 EDT
A campaign group representing some of the inmates at Guantánamo Bay said on Thursday that a mass hunger strike currently taking place at the controversial prison camp is far larger than US military authorities have admitted.
On Wednesday, General John Kelly told a congressional committee that 24 Guantánamo prisoners were on "hunger strike light" and eating "a bit, but not a lot" as a way of protesting against allegations that the Qur'an had been mishandled by military staff, and also to highlight their continuing detention without trial.
But Omar Farah, who works on Guantánamo issues for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said that one of his seven clients at the base, Yemeni inmate Fahad Ghazy, had recently told him that the strike involved many more inmates. "They [the Pentagon] are not admitting the scale and scope of the hunger strike," Farah said.
On March 14, Farah said, Ghazy had told him in a phone call that all but two inmates in Guantánamo's Camp Six were on hunger strike, and that that likely represented almost 130 people. Ghazy had added that some detainees at Camp Five were also on hunger strike. There are about 166 inmates at Guantánamo, of whom about half have been cleared for transfer or release. Nearly all inmates have been held without charge – some for as long as 11 years.
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/21/guantanamo-bay-inmates-hunger-strike
