Community | January 10, 2012 | 14 comments

Guantánamo Prisoners Launch Hunger Strike to Protest Base's 10th Anniversary

source: http://www.democracynow.org

BRAVATRAVELS
www.democracynow.org -

On the tenth anniversary of when the United States began detaining terror suspects at its Guantánamo Bay military base in Cuba, we speak with a former prisoner and the ex-chief U.S. prosecutor — who both call for the Obama administration to close the base.

"People are locked up in isolation camps ... People lost their hands, lost their eyes, lost their limbs," says Omar Deghayes, who was arrested in Pakistan as a terror suspect and held in U.S. custody from May 2002 until December 2007, most of that time at Guantánamo. "Some people were subjected to sleep deprivation.

They weren't allowed to sleep ... and they had to live under those conditions for six years... without being convicted of any crime, which is the most unacceptable thing." Asked if prisoners were tortured at Guantánamo, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at the military prison, answers, "I don't think there is any doubt."

Davis resigned his position in 2007 in protest of what he called political interference in the military commissions of Guantánamo prisoners. "In many cases we had evidence independent of that [torture] that was sufficient to establish guilt.

But to use torture to gain intelligence, and then also to turn around and use that as evidence in an American court, is just not consistent with American principles," Davis says.
  1. groups:
    Community,   News and Politics,   Politics,   Culture,   12 more
  2. tags:
    Guantanamo Bay,  bull shit terrorism,  disrespecting the Constitution
  3.     
    |

14 comments // Guantánamo Prisoners Launch Hunger Strike to Protest Base's 10th Anniversary // Video

  • Truthitswhatsfordinner
  • BRAVATRAVELS
    • +3
      BRAVATRAVELS  

    • out of the list of dissapoinments towards our President...

      This made top of the list...

      What is the purpose of Guantanamo?

      Leen61 made me think of that quetions....

    • 5 months ago
  • Leen61
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • Leen61
  • artemis6
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • RaceBannon
    • +3
      RaceBannon  

    • Of course the existence of guantanamo bay prison is a moral abomination however I take a much more radical stance towards prisons in general as totally inhumane. Prison is to me how an unhealthy society hides its problems, its a practice that goes back to the days of kings and not much has changed except now we tell everyone they can play with toys. Prison not only creates a variety of psychological disorders it creates an enviornment that makes criminals into hardened monsters which only feeds the prison system when they go back into the world.

      It reflects much more that we are living in a punitive society, it doesn't take research to see that just look at how police are easily militarized in cities with the only possible answer to their actions "because I said so". Isn't the saying something like we can be judged by how we treat the least of us...

      Today prisons tend to handle the marginalized members of society the poor, those who have suffered at the hands of inequality and are products of a savage existence. To pay them back for being poor we hit over those people over the head with punitive measures which those who are ignorant seem to consider a reality of life as if there are good and bad people... nothing could be farther from truth.

      So let me leave on this point there is no humane prison, it is merely an oxymoron a delusion whose authority needs to be challenged. Allow me to preempt any knee jerk reaction to by stating the issue of crime in society will not be solved by harsher laws but by first deeply reflecting on the origins of criminal behavior, terrorism or whatever side effect we consequentially produce.

    • 5 months ago
  • BRAVATRAVELS
    • +3
      BRAVATRAVELS  
    • RaceBannon:

      What will be your answer to the quetions of those criminals who are rich and still committ atrocities towards humanity...

      Should they be punish?

      I truly enjoyed what you wrote by the way....

    • 5 months ago
  • RaceBannon
    • +1
      RaceBannon  
    • BRAVATRAVELS:

      boy tough question because everyone wants to get even but I think those people are the most miserable of them all. I dare say some of them secretly long to be part of a healthy and more equal society yet they don't know any other way of doing things.

    • 5 months ago
  • Leen61
    • +3
      Leen61  

    • Amy Goodman rocks! It's disgusting that Gitmo is still open! Personally, I think Obama is not closing Gitmo because this may be where American citizen "enemy combatants" will be sent once those instances occur. Which eventually I think they will.

    • 5 months ago
  • treewolf39
  • kennymotown
  • BRAVATRAVELS
    • +2
      BRAVATRAVELS  

    • As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
      -John Stuart Mill

    • 5 months ago
more from Community:
from the community

top videos