[Ppnews] ‘The Nightmare Has Started Again,’ According to Hunger Striking Guantanamo Prisoner

[Political Prisoner News]

*‘The Nightmare Has Started Again,’ According to Hunger Striking 
Guantanamo Prisoner 
<http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/04/11/the-nightmare-has-started-again-according-to-hunger-striking-guantanamo-prisoner/>* 


http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/04/11/the-nightmare-has-started-again-according-to-hunger-striking-guantanamo-prisoner/

A prisoner, who has been held in detention for eleven years without 
charge or trial, has told an attorney that the prison authorities are 
trying to “break Muslims.” He is participating in a major hunger strike 
that has been ongoing since early February and shared details on his 
health as a result of his participation and what is fueling the hunger 
strike.

Clive Stafford Smith, executive director of the UK-based legal action 
charity, Reprieve, spoke <http://t.co/F0cKzDRa8R> with Younus Chekkouri 
on the strike on April 9. Chekkouri has been in the prison for eleven 
years without charge or trial. He is “very, very depressed” and misses 
his family.”

Violations of prisoners’ Qurans are believed to be what sparked the 
hunger strike. The Pentagon claims there were no violations of any 
Qurans. The prisoners were concealing drugs and the books needed to be 
inspected. But, Chekkouri says none of the detainees hid pills in their 
Qurans, as the Pentagon has claimed in unsubstantiated allegations 
<http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/05/3325688/qurans-at-crux-of-guantanamo-hunger.html>.

According to Smith, the inspection of Qurans, to Chekkouri, is “a 
well-worn and unwise pretext for trying to impose control on the prisoners.

    He relayed how the ICRC had confirmed to him and others that this
    was a pretext being used by the US authorities, and that it was not
    based in fact. There is an Islamic advisor (he gave me the name, but
    I do not include it here as I have no desire to get the man in
    trouble by naming him in a public document) who has been telling the
    JTF-GTMO authorities how best to manipulate the prisoners’ beliefs
    (about whom, more below).

Prisoners like Chekkouri have tried to avoid confrontation with guards. 
They offered to give up their Qurans, but the guard force has preferred 
to essentially ransack prisoners’ cells in searches for “contraband”:

    Younus came back to his cell after a search to find that it “looked
    like Hurricane Katrina had just been through.” The soldiers had
    taken most of Younus’ ‘comfort items’, including his books, as well
    a large number of his legal papers. They had been silly as well:
    they took only one of his shoes, leaving him just one. He had
    nothing that he had not been legally given, and taking it away
    seemed very wrong and very unfair.

Chekkouri estimated that well over 100 prisoners are still engaged in 
the strike. He is one of the hunger strikers and has lost thirty pounds. 
Smith reports that he has “pain everywhere since he is starving the 
whole time.” He told Smith, “Really, now it is just pain everywhere. I 
don’t want to die in Guantánamo.”

The following message was offered by Chekkouri to President Barack Obama:

    The nightmare has started again. For some time, things had got a bit
    better here, some of the guards were acting like human beings. Even
    if we were treated like sheep, at least we were not always
    mistreated. But now it has changed again. And now 86 of us have been
    cleared for release and we are still here. Let us leave Guantánamo
    with clear hearts, and without hatred. Hatred is evil, and it harms
    the person who is hating as well as the person who is hated.”

A “supposed Islamic expert” is apparently behind the change in treatment 
of prisoners. He is offering advice on “how to break Muslims,” according 
to Chekkouri.

“There is one man who is giving Islamic advice, who pretends he is a 
Muslim, and thinks he understands our minds, our diverse culture, our 
souls, everything,” Chekkouri stated. To which, Smith added, “Apparently 
the leadership in Guantánamo is back to trying to break them, as they 
might break an animal or abuse a child, thinking that this is the way to 
treat prisoners, even people who have long since been cleared for release.”

Hillary Stauffer, Reprieve deputy director, reports 
<https://twitter.com/hilarystauffer> (in a series of tweets) on an 
unnamed prisoner participating in the hunger strike, who says, “I’m 
being punished for speaking out. After my call with my lawyer, they took 
everything.”

    When I got back to my cell, everything had been tossed around, like
    garbage…They had taken everything, my legal materials, my kids’
    drawings were ripped off the wall…I am being FCE’d (subjected to a
    Forcible Cell Extraction) for almost everything now…For three days
    now if I say I want more water – they FCE me just to give me
    water…Yesterday, they FCE’d me to bring lunch, even though I am on
    hunger strike & won’t eat…I have had almost no water for 24 hours as
    they would not bring bottled water…I have not showered for more than
    9 days. They say they are busy….I will have to [bathe] from the
    toilet as I was forced to one time before…I am not able to get
    medical attention without being beaten up [FCE'd]…My legs & arms are
    bruised from where they carry me.I bruise easily b/c I am not
    eating….I can’t read. I am dizzy & fall down all the time. I don’t
    call them, it is humiliating.When they call Code Yellow, they step
    on your fingers, your hands, they scratch you….You live in fear when
    they say they are treating you….Yesterday they tied me on a board &
    threw me in a cell b/c the medical people were busy….Code Yellows
    (when a prisoner collapses) in Camp V are now happening 10 – 15
    times a day…In the night people are dying from cold…In the day they
    are dying from the heat…It’s hard to keep calm. They are killing us,
    so it is hard to keep calm.

Just over a week ago, British prisoner Shaker Aamer reported 
<http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/04/02/the-guantanamo-hunger-strike-through-the-eyes-of-british-prisoner-shaker-aamer/> 
on the Emergency Reaction Force that has been carrying out brutal 
“Forced Cell Extractions” (FCE) on prisoners in their cells. A night 
shift has also grown increasingly obnoxious and oppressive, as they make 
loud noises while prisoners are trying to sleep.

Guantanamo defense attorneys and British prisoner Shaker Aamer have both 
contended 130 prisoners have been on strike. The Pentagon, however, has 
maintained the number of prisoners striking is much lower. First it was 
14 prisoners. Then, it was somewhere around 30 or so prisoners. Now, the 
number is 40 prisoners <http://t.co/ituF5jJwEj>. (It was not until 
mid-March the Pentagon acknowledged publicly that a strike was even 
being carried out by prisoners.)

***

As this major hunger strike continues, Pentagon officials have been 
accused by a Guantanamo defense attorney of “mishandling” hundreds of 
thousands of defense lawyer emails and monitoring the Internet searches 
of attorneys preparing their cases.

The /Associated Press/‘s Ben Fox reports 
<http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/10/3336085/pentagon-accused-of-data-breach.html> 
“500,000 defense lawyer emails” were affected in a major “Pentagon 
computer server failure”:

    Richard Kammen, a member of the team representing an alleged senior
    al-Qaida figure facing a war crimes tribunal at the U.S. base in
    Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, also said officials mishandled more than
    500,000 defense lawyer emails and appear to be monitoring their
    Internet searches as they prepare their cases.

As a result, according to the /Miami Herald/‘s Carol Rosenberg, the 
hearing for Nashiri was postponed 
<https://twitter.com/carolrosenberg/status/322362503403294720> so 
“compute confidentiality” issues could be resolved, as Kammen had 
essentially urged.

Rosenberg also reported 
<https://twitter.com/carolrosenberg/status/322345334745485314> that the 
chief Guantanamo defense counsel, Air Force Colonel Karen Mayberry, 
“issued a cease and desist order” last night ordering 
<https://twitter.com/carolrosenberg/status/322343487192309760> ”defense 
lawyers to stop doing privileged work on Pentagon computers.”

It has become increasingly evident 
<http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/02/15/the-continued-subversion-of-attorney-client-privilege-at-guantanamo-bay-prison/> 
in recent months that the Pentagon is violating defense attorneys’ 
privileged communications with their clients.

In February, lawyers found the FBI had bugged facilities they use to 
meet with clients with listening devices that looked like smoke 
detectors. During a January 2012 “proffer session,” which involved the 
“prosecution and defense were meeting on a potential deal,” Captain 
Thomas J. Welsh saw a “law enforcement official on headphones listening” 
in to a meeting. The official was an FBI agent. An order was apparently 
issued in February to disconnect all eavesdropping equipment.

Also, in February, it was reported that the guard force at Guantanamo 
Bay was going through legal bins prisoners have of attorney-client 
privileged communications. They seized already stamped, cleared and 
approved documents relating to the defense from 9/11 defendants.

On January 28, an original classification authority (OCA)—most likely 
with the CIA—was found to have access to a button that could be used to 
censor military commission proceedings. Navy Commander Walter Ruiz, 
representing one of the 9/11 terror suspects, expressed concern, “Before 
we proceed any further, we can only assume that maybe they are 
monitoring additional communications, perhaps when we are at the counsel 
table. We know we have green lights that have the ability to record.” He 
urged the court to get defense lawyers answers on what the body 
monitoring proceedings was capable of doing. (Subsequently, Pohl ordered 
<http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/31/3210054/guantanamo-judge-unplugs-hidden.html> outside 
“censor buttons” to all be unplugged.)

There have been problems with attorney-client privilege between the 
Pentagon and Guantanamo Bay defense attorneys for years. In December 
2011, Rear Admiral David Woods issued an order 
<http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/12/ap-guantanamo-bay-defense-lawyers-irate-new-rules-122711/> 
indicating privileged communications between lawyers and their clients 
in the prison were going to be subject to security inspections by 
Defense Department and law enforcement officials. It prompted outrage 
from the American Bar Association, which declared 
<http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/2011/gao/2011dec21_guantanamoattcltpriv.authcheckdam.pdf> 
it was “deeply troubled to learn that a new policy at Guantanamo Bay 
appears to violate both the letter and spirit of the attorney-client 
privilege.”

***

A “day of action” is being held 
<http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/guant%C3%A1namo-hunger-strike-continues%2C-activists-rally-nationwide-%E2%80%9Cday-of-action-close-guant%C3%A1namoquot%3B> 
today in the United States. Organizers of the protests—which include the 
Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International, Witness Against 
Torture and World Can’t Wait, declared, “The vast majority of the 166 
men still trapped at Guantánamo have been held for more than 11 years 
without charge or fair trial. The Obama administration must take swift 
measures to humanely address the immediate causes of the hunger strike 
and fulfill its promise to close the Guantánamo detention facility.”

None of the men in the prison want to have to starve themselves to be 
freed, but only when prisoners have engaged in hunger strikes 
<http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/01/10/hunger-striking-is-the-only-hope-guantanamo-prisoners-have-for-release/> 
have they ever won anything like access to water or better treatment 
from prison authorities.

In order regain dignity, a life where he is treated respectfully and 
freedom from detention without charge or trial, prisoners like Chekkouri 
feel they must resist in one of the few ways prisoners can resist in the 
prison. If there is any hope that he will return to his family, it lies 
in striking at Guantanamo.

Chekkouri is one of 86 prisoners, who have been cleared by President 
Obama’s administration for release. They are completely innocent and 
have been found to pose no threat whatsoever. They have not been charged 
with committing crimes nor have they been put on trial. They are in 
indefinite detention and most are convinced they are never going to be 
set free. And, they know that without the support of the human rights 
community and others from around the world, they are likely to die from 
the “nightmare” that is being imprisoned at Guantanamo.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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