AMERICAN ACTIVISTS ASKED TO CLOSE GUANTANAMO PRISON

Washingthon, 3 Rajab 1434/12 May 2013 (MINA) – Tens of political activists have gathered in front of the White House, calling on US President Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba.

The protesters in Washington DC wore prison-style jumpsuits in support of the 166 prisoners being held at the notorious US prison. 

As a result of the protest, Pennsylvania Avenue was closed down. Reports say more than two-thirds of the inmates at the prison are currently on hunger strike. 

“It’s a big difference to know that you’re on hunger strike and that you’re probably going to die from it,” human rights activist and hunger striker, Diane Wilson said, Press TV reports Quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA), Sunday (12/5). 

Wilson, on her 10th day of hunger strike in solidarity with the inmates, locked herself to the fence of the White House, demanding Obama to close the prison. 

“We need to see much more leadership on the part of our nation’s leaders, in particularly President [Barack] Obama who has the power, not only to close Guantanamo but to release prisoners,” a protester said.

On Saturday, a number of attorneys representing the hunger striking inmates said the prison officials had threatened their clients with humiliating body searches as a tactic to dissuade them from meeting with their lawyers. 

The hunger strike at the infamous US military detention facility originally began in early February and has drastically surged in recent weeks. 

The detainee’s refusal to eat came as an effort to protest the searching of their personal belongings by prison guards as well as their indefinite detention without any charges or the right to a trial. 

The US forces recently resorted to force-feeding some of the striking captives via tubes through their nose and into their stomach. 

This is while most of the 166 detainees being held at the jail have been cleared for release or have never been charged. 

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a detainment and interrogation facility of the United States military located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility was established in January 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees. It had determined to be connected with opponents in the Global War on Terror including Afghanistan and later Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia. It is operated by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) of the United States government in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which fronts on Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

The detainment areas consisted of three camps: Camp Delta (which includes Camp Echo), Camp Iguana, and Camp X-Ray, but Camp X-Ray has been closed. The facility is often referred to as Guantánamo, G-Bay or Gitmo, after GTMO, the military abbreviation for the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.

After Bush political appointees at the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice advised the Bush administration that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could be considered outside U.S. legal jurisdiction, military guards took the first twenty captives to Guantanamo on 11 January 2002. The Bush administration asserted that detainees were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Ensuing U.S. Supreme Courtdecisions since 2004 have determined otherwise and that the courts have jurisdiction: it ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on 29 June 2006, that detainees were entitled to the minimal protections listed under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Following this, on 7 July 2006, the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners would in the future be entitled to protection under Common Article 3.(T/P015/P04)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)