Untitled Document
 |
Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay |
One of the six Bahraini prisoners being held at the US prison camp
at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is seriously ill and has been hospitalised after going
on hunger strike. Isa Almurbati is now being force-fed by feeding tube,
his lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, said after visiting the Bahraini detainees
for the fifth time. "He has lost a tremendous amount of weight and looks
exhausted. There is nothing to suggest that he will end this hunger strike,"
the lawyer wrote in a letter to the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, in which
he expressed his concerns over his client's health.
The US military says only 24 prisoners are still on hunger strike out of the
estimated 200 refusing food last month. The strike began on August 8 over conditions
and a lack of legal rights at the prison camp. The New York-based Center for
Constitutional Rights (CCR) says the strike is the most widespread of all the
protests the prisoners have staged since the camp opened in January 2002.
At least two relatives of Bahraini prisoners are expected to attend an international
conference on human rights in London next month to describe the suffering of
their family members in Guantanamo Bay.
Earlier this week in a federal court, American lawyers accused doctors treating
the Guantanamo hunger strikers of trying to discourage them from continuing
the strike by inserting thick feeding tubes through their noses without giving
them painkillers. They also claimed they had used recycled dirty feeding tubes,
but US government lawyers denied the charges.
