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annm4peace

(6,119 posts) Tue Jun 30, 2015, 11:33 PM Jun 2015

Another Detainee schedule for release is dying from hunger strike. Our War Crimes continue

https://ccrjustice.org/home/blog/2015/06/26/tariq-hunger-striking-his-freedom-75-lbs-he-enduring-immense-suffering-and#

I last saw Tariq Ba Odah in March, just one month after he completed the eighth year of an unbroken hunger strike in protest of his continued detention without charge at Guantánamo. Tariq’s lawyer, my colleague Omar Farah, and I didn’t need to exchange a word—Tariq was unrecognizable to us both. His skin, pasty and yellow, barely covered the bones protruding from his small frame. My hand could have wrapped entirely around his arm. Despite his usual smile, I could only think of Tariq on the verge of death, and the absurdity and cruelty of his situation.

There is no excuse for this. Rather than sounding the alarm, the Department of Defense is keeping up appearances, and feigning that they have the situation under control, while hiding Tariq away in solitary confinement in Camp 5. Tariq weighs about 75 pounds—that’s 56% of what someone his height and build should weigh and about as much as the average American boy at just 10 years old.

But Tariq is 36. He has been imprisoned without charge since he was 23. And he has been on hunger strike for most of the years since.

What excuse could the Obama administration possibly have to continue delaying his freedom? None. It is the Defense Department’s gross negligence that has Tariq on the precipice of death, holding on to the only way he has of reflecting back what Guantánamo has done to him and others.

This week, CCR filed a motion in Tariq’s habeas case, asking a federal judge to order his immediate release. According to Army Regulation 190-8 –binding domestic law that incorporates the Geneva Convention and requires captives in U.S. military custody to be treated humanely – individuals who are seriously ill are eligible for direct repatriation. According to three medical experts who filed declarations in support our motion, Tariq is seriously ill, perhaps to the point of death. His shockingly low weight conclusively indicates that he is presenting “symptoms of severe malnourishment and starvation that are typically seen only in late and end-stage cancer or AIDS patients,” that he is in such a fragile state that a common cold or a fall could cause organ failure and imminent death, and that it is impossible for him to get the medical care he urgently requires in Guantánamo.

Tariq’s body is a metaphor for Guantánamo—and it shows, in excruciating detail, that neither can go on forever. To force-feed someone through their nose indefinitely, against established medical practice, and expect them to live is an experiment that will inevitably fail. Tariq is proof of this: the feeding regime intended to keep him “alive” has stopped working. After eight years, Tariq no longer appears able to absorb the calories and nutrients necessary to sustain activity and healing. “There is not one clinical study that I am aware of that demonstrates that adequate long-term nutritional support can be delivered via nasogastric enteral nutrition,” our medical expert concluded in his declaration. “There is likewise no responsible physician or health care facility in the country that would ever use a protocol that attempted to provide long-term nutritional support through [nasogastric] eternal feeding.”

Like the majority of Yemenis left at the prison and long cleared for release, it is politics that keeps Tariq in this hell: Republican propaganda that feeds off of fear and ignorance and the Defense Department’s insubordination on following the president’s orders to transfer people out of the prison.

But ultimately, it is President Obama who is responsible; Tariq bears the scars of his failed promises. I can’t help but think about his impassioned speech in 2013, at the height of a mass hunger strike:

“Imagine a future – ten years from now, or twenty years from now – when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country. Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.”

Two years later, these words fill me with sadness and anger as I think of Tariq in his cell. This is who we are, but it doesn’t have to be. Tariq does not want to die, and dying should not be the price of his principled stance against one of the world’s most shameful, ongoing human rights violations. He deserves his health and his freedom.

Tariq has held on to hope and the strength of his spirit to endure the incredible injustice our government has done to him. I’m holding on to the hope that a court will hear our plea and finally order our client’s freedom.

“Freedom should be much more precious for the human being than all the desires on earth. And we should never give it up regardless of how expensive the price may be.” – Tariq Ba Odah, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 2013

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Please also read below a new letter to President Obama from Senators Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin -- included in our latest article -- calling for urgent action to release the 51 men still held who have been approved for release, a position strongly endorsed by the "Close Guantánamo" campaign.

To ask President Obama to continue releasing prisoners from Guantánamo,
call the White House on 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414 or submit a comment online.

Please also read about the "petty and nasty" decision by Guantánamo's commander to ban lawyers from bringing food to share with their clients, which was announced in May 2015.

To call for the ban to be dropped, call U.S. Southern Command on 305-437-1244 and ask for Rear Adm. Cozad to continue to allow prisoners -- "detainees," as the authorities describe them -- to have food brought to them by their attorneys. -

See more at: http://www.closeguantanamo.org

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Letter to President Obama Calling for the Release of Prisoners from Guantánamo

May 4, 2015

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama:

On January 22, 2009, you signed a historic executive order to restore America's role as a
leader on human rights by requiring the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay to be closed
within one year. Unfortunately, more than six years later, it remains open at great financial
cost and harm to the national security of the United States. At an event earlier this year in Cleveland,
you stated that if you could go back to your first day in office, you would immediately close the detention
facility at Guantánamo.

Although onerous restrictions imposed by Congress have hindered efforts to close the detention facility, we urge you to immediately take meaningful action in order to end this unfortunate chapter in our nation's history before you leave office.
With only 20 months remaining in your Presidency, time is of the essence.

Currently, of the 122 detainees who remain at Guantánamo, nearly half have been unanimously cleared for transfer to either their home countries or third countries, through a rigorous process that requires the unanimous agreement of the Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence, Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Many of these detainees were approved for transfer years ago and their continued indefinite detention serves as a propaganda tool for terrorists and harms our national security. There have been no transfers of Guantánamo detainees since January 15, an especially troubling lapse in light of how little time is left in your administration.

Transferring the 57 cleared detainees as quickly as possible will be a momentous step toward closing Guantánamo. For those detainees who have not been cleared for transfer or charged with a crime, we urge you to expedite and prioritize hearings before the Periodic Review Board (PRB), as required by Executive Order 13567.

It is important that all eligible detainees receive a review by this interagency panel as soon as possible to determine if their continued law of war detention is necessary. Of the 14 PRB determinations that have been made public, nine detainees have had their status changed to become eligible for transfer. At the current pace, PRBs for all remaining eligible detainees will not take place until the end of the decade. Accelerating the PRB process will help to determine whether additional detainees can be transferred from Guantánamo.

While entirely eliminating the risk of detainee recidivism is impossible, the enhanced review process your administration instituted has helped to mitigate the risk that detainees will re-engage in terrorist activities. Statistics released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in March confirm that instances of confirmed and suspected detainee recidivism have both dramatically decreased since you took office.

As a result of this more rigorous process, less than six percent of detainees transferred since 2009 have been confirmed of re-engaging and less than one percent of detainees have been suspected of re-engaging in terrorist activities. This marked improvement over the record of the prior administration demonstrates that it is possible to transfer detainees while also protecting our national security. Maintaining the status quo at Guantánamo is reckless fiscal policy.

At a time when budgets are tight, the detention facility is costing our country billions of dollars. Each detainee held at Guantánamo costs the government as much as $3.3 million annually and that figure will only continue to rise as the detainee population ages. By comparison, it costs approximately $79,000 to house a person in the most secure federal Supermax prison in America.

We should not squander precious manpower and resources holding detainees who have been approved for transfer. At the request of your administration, we have worked to ease unduly burdensome detainee transfer restrictions, and we ask that you utilize current authorities to expedite the transfer of all cleared detainees and accelerate the Periodic Review Board process to determine if additional detainees can be transferred.

These are two commonsense steps that you can take immediately to bring America closer to our shared aim of shuttering this unnecessary prison, a goal you articulated on your second day in office.

Patrick Leahy United States Senator
Dianne Feinstein United States Senator
Richard Durbin United States Senator -

See more at: http://www.closeguantanamo.org/Articles/166-Senators-Leahy-Feinstein-and-Durbin-Tell-Obama-to-Free-57-Cleared-Guantanamo-Prisoners-As-Quickly-As-Possible#sthash.RcAuJofT.dpuf