- "After years in U.S. custody without formal charges
or a hearing on the legality of their detention despite a Supreme Court
ruling in their favor the hunger-striking detainees at Guantánamo
have come to the conclusion that ... "now after four years in captivity,
life and death are the same."
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-
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- NEW YORK - After an
emergency court hearing on counsel's right to information regarding the
health status and medical treatment of Guantánamo hunger strikers
late last week, Julia Tarver, an attorney with the New York City-based
law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and cooperating
counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights, sought and obtained
public release of her declaration regarding the situation at the Guantánamo
facility. Tarver's notes detail interviews she conducted at Guantánamo
with her clients, Yousef Al Shehri, Abduhl-Rahman Shalabi, and Majid Al
Joudi, who are currently engaged in a hunger strike there. The declassified
notes reveal the dire conditions of these men. According to Tarver's declaration:
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- * Force-feedings resulted in prisoners "vomiting
up substantial amounts of blood. When they vomited up blood, the soldiers
mocked and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like 'look
what your religion has brought you.'"
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- * "Large tubes - the thickness of a finger - were
viewed by detainees as objects of torture. They were forcibly shoved up
the detainees' noses and down into their stomachs. Again, no anesthesia
or sedative was provided."
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- * "[D]etainees were verbally abused and insulted
and were restrained from head to toe. They had shackles or other restraints
on their arms, legs, waist, chest, knees, and head with these restraints
in place, they were given intravenous medication (often quite painfully,
as inexperienced medical professionals seemed incapable of locating appropriate
veins). Their arms were swollen from multiple attempts to stick them with
IV needles If detainees moved, they were hit in the chest/heart."
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- * "In front of Guantánamo physicians - including
the head of the detainee hospital - the guards took NG tubes from one detainee,
and with no sanitization whatsoever, reinserted it into the nose of a different
detainee. When these tubes were reinserted, the detainees could see the
blood and stomach bile from other detainees remaining on the tubes. A person
detainees only know as Dr. [redacted] stood by and watched these procedures,
doing nothing to intervene."
-
- * Detainee Abdul-Rahman communicated that, "one
Navy doctor came and put the tube in his nose and down his throat and then
just kept moving the tube up and down, until finally Abdul-Rahman started
violently throwing up blood. Abdul-Rahman tried to resist the 'torture'
from this physician, but he could not breathe."
-
- * Detainees complying with the nasal tube feeding were
doing so only because they believed it had been ordered by a U.S. court,
a belief that is simply untrue.
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- After years in U.S. custody without formal charges or
a hearing on the legality of their detention - despite a Supreme Court
ruling in their favor - the hunger-striking detainees at Guantánamo
have come to the conclusion that, according to Abdul-Rahman,"now after
four years in captivity, life and death are the same."
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- While the Center for Constitutional Rights and cooperating
habeas counsel have continuously voiced concern for their clients' health
given the length of their detention without trial and the conditions of
their confinement, the situation has become acutely dangerous since detainees
began their latest hunger strike on August 8, 2005. It is unclear how many
detainees are on hunger strike at this time, but as many as 200 men have
participated at various times.
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- "What we learned on our last trip to Guantánamo
was troubling to us as lawyers, as human beings, and as Americans. We never
thought we would see the day when this sort of treatment took place at
a facility run by the United States government. It is inconsistent with
the rule of law this country was founded upon, and it is inconsistent with
the spirit and values of the American people," said Julia Tarver,
partner with the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
LLP and one of CCR's leading habeas attorneys. Ms. Tarver represents 10
detainees from Saudi Arabia.
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- CCR cooperating attorneys from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind,
Wharton & Garrison LLP and many other firms have emphasized the life-threatening
nature of the situation at Guantánamo. They have informed the court
that the DOD has invited representatives of the American Medical Association
to visit Guantánamo and investigate the medical treatment provided
to prisoners on the hunger strike. The attorneys urged the court to appoint
physicians to investigate the medical treatment or to consider allowing
counsel to bring their own medical experts to Guantánamo. Attorneys
also asked that they be able to accompany the AMA representatives if they
go.
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- "It is both depressing and yet profoundly moving
that this hunger strike continues in the face of such horrible adversity.
Despite the very real possibility that some of these men may die, it is
deeply life-affirming that so many of these detainees living in such dire
circumstances are willing to risk their lives and bodies for the sake of
basic democratic values that should be, and sadly are not, part of American
policy today," said Barbara Olshansky, Deputy Legal Director of the
Center of Constitutional Rights.
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- Center for Constitutional Rights
- http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/home.asp
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