What’s happening at Guantanamo Bay is daily torture

Independent journalist Jason Leopold just visited Guantanamo Bay and sent this report and photos (see this link):

Last week, thanks to the generous support of the Freedom of Press Foundation, I traveled to Guantanamo during the height of a mass hunger strike to tour the detention facility, along with four other members of the media. We were shown the two main detention camps—5 and 6—as well as Camp X-Ray, the detainee hospital, library, food preparation and we observed the prisoners’ morning prayer.… 

The tour was carefully scripted and well choreographed but still incredibly valuable.… The military impressed upon us how troublesome and ungrateful the prisoners are and how patient the guards have been despite being routinely “splashed” with feces and urine. The doctors and nurses told us they have not heard a single prisoner on hunger strike who has been tube fed complain about the brutality of the process, which I laid bare in an… exclusive report… for Al Jazeera last week.

We left the island last Friday, the 100th day of the hunger strike.… The number of Guantanamo prisoners refusing food grew by three during our weeklong visit. There are now 103 prisoners participating in the protest. Thirty are being tube fed, according to the government’s tally.

A Guantanamo spokesman, Navy Capt. Robert Durand, told me the military will not negotiate with the prisoners to end the hunger strike.… 

These photographs were reviewed by the military and some were cropped to conceal surveillance cameras, a guard tower and other landmarks the military deemed sensitive. The rest of the photographs can be viewed on… Flickr.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

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