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  #26  
Old 07-04-2013, 05:06 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dingfod View Post
If they have basbousa, konfah, and qatayef force-fed after sundown, I might sign up for that.

Please do. Can I clamp the tube for you.
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  #27  
Old 07-09-2013, 06:52 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Mos Def being force fed the way Guantanamo hunger strikers are. This video is everywhere on Facebook, so finally people are picking up on the hunger strike.

Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) force fed under standard GuantĂ¡namo Bay procedure – video | World news | guardian.co.uk

Also: Israeli docs to consult US govt on force feeding Gitmo hunger strikers | Mondoweiss
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  #28  
Old 07-14-2013, 04:32 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

I just stumbled on the Mos Def video and came here to post about it. Very disturbing.
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  #29  
Old 07-18-2013, 05:20 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

n/m
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  #30  
Old 08-01-2013, 03:15 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

The Daily Beast has a story up on details of the Administration's "plan" for Guantanamo, which mostly appears to be reasons why the Administration cannot act:
Some detainees cannot be returned to nations that are on the US State Department's "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria. By which they mean: the three Sudanese and four Syrians. That's seven. Okay, what about the rest?
The Daily Beast:
Quote:
the requirement that the secretary of Defense certify that detainees will not engage in terrorism is basically impossible to meet. And while Congress did give the president the authority last year to waive the certification requirement, the White House contends it has been given this discretion in name only. “The administration’s ability to transfer detainees is significantly limited even if the waiver provisions are exercised,” the plan says.

The waiver power is the crux of the dispute between the administration and its critics. The critics accuse Obama of interpreting his authority too narrowly. “Obama promised to close Guantánamo, and he clearly has the authority right now in existing legislation to do it, but he won’t,” says Thomas Wilner, a Washington lawyer who has represented clients in two landmark Guantánamo Supreme Court cases.
So here's a dichotomy: when it comes to drone strikes and domestic spying, then the Obama Administration cloaks their actions in secrecy and takes extremely broad positions that they fight to not have adjudicated in any manner. But when this second-term president comes to releasing Guantanamo detainees- here his Administration claims that they are constrained by the details and the rule of law. One of these things is not like the other.

Quote:
The bigger problem, administration officials say, is that the certification requirements can’t be waived if the receiving country is facing a continuing threat of terrorism that could “substantially affect its ability to exercise control” over the detainee. That provision, they argue, makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to send detainees to Yemen, a country that remains in the grip of an al Qaeda insurgency. Of the 86 detainees who have been cleared for transfer, 56 are from Yemen. “The Yemenis are off the table at least for now,” one senior administration official says.
Let's talk about Yemen and these detainees.
Reuters:
Quote:
Yemen is key to any closure of Guantanamo, for 56 of the 86 detainees who have been cleared for transfer or release are from the impoverished country on the Arabian Peninsula.

But al Qaeda's regional wing is active in Yemen, worrying U.S. officials who fear that released prisoners would eventually join up with Islamist militants.
So: we can free these prisoners who we cleared for release- as they do not pose a threat and we have no evidence to try them in court- but they might commit future crimes, so we can't release them! Minority Report II: Kafka This! I can't possibly imagine why this is a militant recruiter's dream in radicalizing Muslims!

Quote:
President Barack Obama promised in May to end a ban on transferring Yemenis back home but no announcement on a decision to release detainees is expected when he meets [Yemen President] Hadi at the White House on Thursday, administration officials said.

"I have no reason to believe any releases are imminent," said David Remes, a lawyer for some of the Yemenis detained at Guantanamo. "Everybody says the right thing, and then nothing happens."

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives recently voted twice to block the transfer of detainees to Yemen. Hadi met on Wednesday with members of the Senate foreign relations committee. There is less resistance to shuttering the prison in the Senate, where Obama's fellow Democrats hold a slim majority.

A handful of Senate Republicans, including Arizona's influential Senator John McCain, also want it shut.

The United States halted repatriations to Yemen in 2010 after a man trained by militants there attempted to bomb a U.S.-bound plane in 2009 with a bomb concealed in his underwear.

Transfers to Yemen are more likely to resume if Washington decides its new government has taken adequate measures against al Qaeda and made the country stable.
Let's see: how has the US been assisting in that stability?
Democracy Now!, June 2013:
Quote:
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, the first time that President Obama authorized any strikes against Yemen was December 17th, 2009. Yemen had been bombed by the United States once before that under President Bush in November of 2002. And President Obama was expanding the authorities for the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA to strike in countries beyond Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. And in this first missile attack, the U.S. used cruise missiles and cluster bombs on this small Bedouin village in the—in Majalah, in Abyan province. And they said that they were targeting an al-Qaeda leader in an al-Qaeda training camp. And it turned out that the bombing killed 46 people—14 women and 21 children. And the Yemeni government actually took responsibility for the strikes and said that its own air force had conducted it and that it was a successful attack against an al-Qaeda base. And the United States began conspiring with the Yemeni regime to bomb Yemen and then have the Yemenis take responsibility for it. And General David Petraeus, the CENTCOM commander, was revealed in the WikiLeaks cables to have hatched this plot with the Yemeni dictator, Ali Abddullah Saleh. But this was one of the most gruesome attacks that’s been conducted over the past three years in Yemen, shredding human beings, children and women, in this strike that they said was aimed at an al-Qaeda camp.
The Age:
Quote:
'I do think that, particularly in Yemen, we're making more enemies than we are killing terrorists,'' Scahill says. ''And those new enemies are not necessarily terrorists at all - they're people with a legitimate score to settle.''
So: there is evidence the US is actually destabilizing or further radicalizing populations in Yemen; the President of Yemen is here asking for his citizens to be returned to Yemen; the Yemeni detainees cannot be released until Yemen stabilizes. Well then! Problem decisively not fucking solved!
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  #31  
Old 08-01-2013, 03:53 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

I wanted to tangent for a second to focus on the idea of broad, permissive legal interpretations of the administration vs narrow, "our hands are tied" interpretations of law.

Egypt's democratically elected leader was overthrown in a military coup: by law we are required to suspend any financial aid to that nation. Did the US suspend monies flowing to Egypt? No. Solution: simply never officially acknowledge that it is a military coup.

Torture Ban Treaty: The US is a signatory (Reagan signed it) to this international treaty saying we are bound by law to investigate and prosecute torture. The Obama Administration decided to unilaterally ignore our obligations and "look forward, not back" to the torture crimes committed by the US and proxies on our behalf.

I just find it ludicrous and self-serving that the same administration that gave itself the power to kill anyone, including US citizens, anywhere in the world, claims it hasn't the power to release detainees.
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  #32  
Old 08-01-2013, 10:47 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Frankly, I don't understand why they don't release them to Yemen and then kill them with drone strikes. No one seems to pay attention to who they are gunning down over there and they'd look like they are fulfilling their promise to close Guantanamo.

I'd say I'm too cynical, but I don't think that's actually possible in this case.

By the way, the fact that my mind immediately comes up with simple, yet Machiavellian solutions like that is one of the reason I'm convinced I'm going to hell, if there is one.
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  #33  
Old 08-01-2013, 11:23 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Nah. You're right, if they're gonna be bastards anyway, they could at least make an effort to be superbastards about it.
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  #34  
Old 09-04-2013, 06:25 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Wow, this dropped off the radar, now didn't it?
AP via CBS News, August 29 2013:
Quote:
Two Algerians held at Guantanamo Bay prison for more than a decade have returned to their homeland, where they were interrogated by judicial authorities pending an investigation, the Algiers Court said Thursday.

Their release, the first from Guantanamo in nearly a year, followed a pledge by President Barack Obama to renew efforts to close the prison on the U.S. base in Cuba, an initiative that has been thwarted by Congress.
...>snip<...
Until the secret release Wednesday, no prisoner had left Guantanamo since September 2012.
These releases have also been thwarted by the Obama Administration, as I've mentioned up-thread. The secretive release of these Algerians was intentionally downplayed- very little media. Considering the government's modus operandi this is hardly surprising that information is not forthcoming.

Update on the hunger strike and some background.

The Daily Beast, Sept 3 2013:
Quote:
Out of the 164 men held in the island prison, the chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Military Commissions, Brigadier General Mark Martins, told me that 144 would never be charged with any crime.
...>snip<....
Of the 144 men who will never be charged, 84 have been cleared to leave for years. But they live in a Kafkaesque legal limbo. In what a Guantanamo spokesman claimed was a concession to the Geneva Conventions, they’re banned from speaking to press.

As of September 2, 35 prisoners are on hunger strike. Thirty-two are being force-fed, a brutal process that involves Ensure being pumped through a tube snaked into their stomachs.

One night, I drank beer with a press officer at Guantanamo’s jerk chicken joint. She described herself as a pacifist in camo. As she spoke about the hunger strike, her tanned, pretty face drew tight. “I don’t know if they’re innocent. I don’t know if they’re guilty,” she told me. “I don’t even know their f**king names.”

This is by design. Guantanamo’s guards refer to prisoners by numbers rather than names, and are banned from reading their Joint-Task-Force Guantanamo detainee assessments, which WikiLeaks made public. The U.S. government refused to release prisoners’ names until 2006.
...>snip<...
For a journalist, trying to piece together the life of a Guantanamo detainee involves staring into the bureaucratic unknown. You have JTF-GTMO assessments, filled with feverish claims and torture-induced accusations. (One former detainee, Binyam Mohamed, comes up repeatedly as a source of accusations against fellow prisoners—accusations he made during C.I.A. rendition in Morocco, while interrogators allegedly sliced his genitals with razors. The U.K. government awarded him a million pounds in damages for their role in his torture.) You have their lawyers. If you’re lucky, you have blacked-out intelligence reports. Thanks to a Freedom of Information suit filed by Miami Herald journalist Carol Rosenberg, you know the names of the indefinite detainees.
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  #35  
Old 12-12-2013, 03:33 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Well, this is hardly surprising:
Al Jazeera, Dec 11 2013:
Quote:
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — A media blackout on detailing the exact number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay has been put in place because the protest was too successful at generating media attention, a public affairs official has told Al Jazeera.

Detainees at the controversial detention center launched the strike to protest their conditions and the fact that many of them have been held without charge for more than a decade, though scores have been cleared for release.

The dramatic protest has been successful in generating headlines across the globe, and at one time more than 100 prisoners were involved as daily updates were issued by camp officials. But with the number of protesters dwindling, military officials last week made the decision to stop releasing figures for those remaining on hunger strike — even when specifically asked by journalists.
...>snip<...
The public affairs director took issue with critics who say the policy change contradicts transparency promises by Guantanamo officials and the president. “Everyone is saying, ‘You’re trying to shut down reporting on this,'” he said. “That’s not true. We’re not here to drive the message. We’re not trying to drive the agenda. We’re here to show you the facility.”

[Cmdr. John] Filostrat would neither confirm nor deny a claim by British prisoner Shaker Aamer, who said last week that the “Guantanamo hunger strike is back on” and that there are now 29 prisoners protesting, of whom 19 are being force-fed. Aamer made the claims during a phone call with his attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, director of the U.K.-based human rights charity Reprieve. Stafford Smith gave Al Jazeera a copy of his notes from his Dec. 5 phone call with Aamer. The last official tally, released on Dec. 2, was that 15 hunger strikers remained — all of them force-fed.
It is probably also especially useful to not report on the number of hunger strikers considering that force-feeding prisoners is considered torture by the UN under international law. When the data is bad- or potentially incriminating- much better to pretend you are not tracking or do not share said data.
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  #36  
Old 12-12-2013, 04:03 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Janet View Post
By the way, the fact that my mind immediately comes up with simple, yet Machiavellian solutions like that is one of the reason I'm convinced I'm going to hell, if there is one.

I'll save you a place, right next to the fires.
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Old 12-12-2013, 04:09 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

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Originally Posted by Janet View Post
Frankly, I don't understand why they don't release them to Yemen and then kill them with drone strikes.

That would not be PC, so they just need to release them far out in the desert where they can't get into trouble. Removing their restraints would be unkind, as they would then try to walk out, that would be mean.
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Old 12-31-2013, 04:16 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

The Guardian, Dec 31, 2013:
Quote:
Twelve years of detention without trial has ended for three Uighur men who have left Guantánamo Bay for Slovakia, the US Department of Defense announced on Tuesday, ending a clear mistake of the 9/11 era.

The three men – Yusef Abbas, Hajiakbar Abdulghuper and Saidullah Khalik – did not pose any terrorist threat to the US, a recognition the Defense Department came to during the Bush administration. A federal judge ordered them freed in 2008, and a 2009 panel appointed by President Barack Obama concurred. Their continuing detention was the result of a snarled political, bureaucratic and diplomatic process that underscored the continuing difficulty of closing the notorious detention center.
155 detainees left at Guantanamo.
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  #39  
Old 01-11-2014, 04:48 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

BBC has a story today about the US having many prisoners at Guantanamo who are cleared for release but the US refuses to repatriate them because they are from Yemen:
Quote:
Today it is home to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), it is riven by power struggles and tribal rivalries, and after a number of earlier failed experiments it has no effective mechanism for rehabilitating former detainees from Guantanamo Bay into mainstream society.

Some of the most skilled and dangerous senior members of AQAP now at large in Yemen are former detainees who renounced violence in exchange for their release.

Such was the US government's distrust of Yemen's ability to handle returning prisoners and stop them joining al-Qaeda or other militant movements that in 2010 it imposed a moratorium on all repatriations to Yemen.
So here's the thing: this is a continuation of propaganda where the US justifies holding prisoners without sentence, trial, or recourse. Why? Because future crime!

Protip: all members of society, including ex-prisoners have the capability of committing future violence and crime. But we don't usually hold people because of the possibility of future crime because that's straight-up Orwellian authoritarian make-believe.

Related to this is the idea that they are returning to the battlefield; previous 2009 estimates put the number of detainees who were actually in military roles opposing the US at 4% of the total detainees; the phrasing has built into it the assumption that most detainees were actually pulled from a battlefield while actively fighting the US, which would be opposite of the truth; most detainees were found to not be militants at all, let alone to have committed terrorist acts.

So how many have supposedly "returned" to the "battlefield" (by the way, does simply living underneath drones count as "battlefield")?
Quote:
On 13 January 2009, the Pentagon said that 18 former detainees are confirmed to have participated in attacks, and 43 are suspected to have been involved in attacks. A Spokesman said evidence of someone being "confirmed" could include fingerprints, a conclusive photograph or "well-corroborated intelligence reporting." He said the Pentagon would not discuss how the statistics were derived because of security concerns. National security expert and CNN analyst Peter Bergen, states that some of those "suspected" to have returned to terrorism are so categorized because they publicly made anti-American statements, "something that's not surprising if you've been locked up in a U.S. prison camp for several years." If all on the "confirmed" list have indeed returned to the battlefield, that would amount to 4 percent of the detainees who have been released.
As a comparison, the rate of prisoners in the US prison system being convicted of a new crime within the first three years of release has historically hovered around 46%.

As well, the BBC story has the very common western slant to a news story, that is also filled with subtext of "look at those poor backward foreigners and their backward country LOL." So yeah. Calling bullshit.
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  #40  
Old 04-04-2014, 12:14 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

This probably deserves to go in the torture thread, but the Senate Intelligence Committee is declassifying portions of a report into the CIA's torture regime. Part of this bears on Guantanamo detainees. From The Guardian:
Quote:
The committee study covered 100 detainees who were either in CIA custody or sent by the US to other countries for interrogation, a far larger figure than previously known.

Alberto Mora, the former Navy general counsel who fought with the Bush administration over torture, said he considered the Senate vote to be a vindication.

“I think we’re going to have an authoritative, factual accounting of what actually happened with interrogations,” Mora said.

The Obama administration, after a Justice Department inquiry that ended in 2012, declined to prosecute anyone at the CIA for involvement in waterboarding, which gives those subjected to it the feeling that they are drowning, and other brutal interrogation methods. That move caused severe disillusionment among human rights groups.

But the Senate committee's action has rekindled at least some advocates' hopes for greater transparency about one of the darker episodes of the post-9/11 era, as well as an official recognition of torture's ineffectiveness.

And while the Senate study may not reopen the question of legal accountability for the CIA, it has direct implications for the military tribunal at Guantánamo Bay for the accused 9/11 conspirators.

On Wednesday, defense lawyers for one of those men, Ammar al-Baluchi, said they filed a now-sealed motion for the Senate torture report to be entered as evidence in his case.

On 14 April, the tribunal will consider whether Baluchi’s co-defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, is competent to stand trial. Bin al-Shibh was subjected to the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” that are detailed in the Senate report.


“Whether Mr Baluchi was tortured goes to the heart of the defense and prosecution cases. It’s relevant to what evidence can be admitted against him, it’s relevant to how he’s treated before the trial and it’s relevant to what sentence he should receive, if any,” said James Connell, one of the Defense Department attorneys assigned to Baluchi.
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  #41  
Old 04-04-2014, 02:54 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

For "enhanced interrogation" I always read "Verschärfte Vernehmung", the original name.
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  #42  
Old 06-01-2014, 12:58 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Five Afghans are being traded for the release of US Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.

From the BBC:
Quote:
Mohammad Fazl served as the Taliban's deputy defence minister during America's military campaign in 2001. Accused of possible war crimes, including the murder of thousands of Shia Muslims.

Khirullah Khairkhwa was a senior Taliban official serving as interior minister and governor of Herat, Afghanistan's third largest city. Alleged to have had direct links to Osama bin Laden.

Abdul Haq Wasiq was the Taliban's deputy minister of intelligence. Said to have been central in forming alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight against US and coalition forces.

Mullah Norullah Noori
was a senior Taliban military commander and a governor. Also accused of being involved in the mass killings of Shia Muslims.

Mohammad Nabi Omari held multiple Taliban leadership roles, including chief of security. Alleged to have been involved in attacks against US and coalition forces.
Note the dates these men entered Guantanamo as prisoners without trial:
Mohammed Fazl: Jan 12, 2002
Khirullah Khairkhwa May 1, 2002
Abdul Haq Wasiq Jan 11, 2002
Mullah Norullah Noori Jan 12, 2002
Mohammad Nabi Omari Oct 28, 2002
These five prisoners being released were a requirement for negotiating peace talks with the Taliban, back in 2011-2012. Looks like the trigger finally got pulled on that.
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  #43  
Old 12-08-2014, 04:21 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Defense.gov, Dec 7 2014:
Quote:
The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of Ahmed Adnan Ahjam, Ali Hussain Shaabaan, Omar Mahmoud Faraj, Abdul Bin Mohammed Abis Ourgy, Mohammed Tahanmatan, and Jihad Diyab from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Government of Uruguay.
...>snip<...
Today, 136 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.
67 of those detainees were cleared for release years ago but still remain held by the US government without recourse to trial, sentencing, a release date, or justice: a continual beacon of recruitment for radical Islamic militants and a hypocrisy writ large when the US chides other nations about rule of law.
The government under Obama has been fighting tooth and nail to avoid releasing any footage of the force feedings at Guantanamo that have been administered to the hunger striking detainees.
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  #44  
Old 12-20-2014, 05:44 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

BBCNews today:
Quote:
Four Afghan detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison have been sent back to their home country, the Pentagon says.

Shawali Khan, Khi Ali Gul, Abdul Ghani and Mohammed Zahir were repatriated after a thorough review of their cases.
Shawali Khan- held there without trial for 12 years.
Khi Ali Gul- held without trial for 11 years.
Abdul Ghani- held without trial for 11 years.
Mohammed Zahir- held without trial for 11 years.
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Old 06-14-2015, 02:15 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Six Yemeni prisoners released to Oman.
Quote:
The six men boarded a flight Friday from the U.S. facility in Cuba, and their transfer reduced Guantanamo's population to 116. President Barack Obama has now transferred more than half the 242 detainees who were at Guantanamo when he was sworn into office in 2009 after campaigning to close it.
Here's the list of newly released detainees:
Emad Abdullah Hassan- held without trial for 13 years, started hunger striking in 2007.
Idris Ahmad 'Abd Al Qadir Idris- held without trial for 13 years.
Jalal Salam Awad Awad- held without trial for 13 years.
Sharaf Ahmad Muhammad Mas'ud- held without trial for 13 years.
Saa'd Nasser Moqbil Al Azani- held without trial for 13 years.
Muhammad Ali Salem Al Zarnuki- held without trial for 13 years.

Those same names translated differently on the wiki list:

Emad Abdalla Hassan
Idris Ahmed Abdu Qader Idris
Jalal Salam Bin Amer
Sharaf Ahmad Muhammad Masud
Saad Masir Mukbl Al Azani
Mohammed Ali Salem Al Zarnuki
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Old 06-14-2015, 01:29 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Looks like these are more literal transcriptions. With the ' standing in for 'ain for instance. And Nasser instead of Masir which isn't even a real name I've ever heard of. The wiki list seems a bit sloppy. And Jalal Salam Bin Amer is probably a nickname (son of Amer).
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Old 06-14-2015, 02:05 PM
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Congratulations on completing America's anti-terrorism program, as we return you to your country of origin we hope you feel no ill will towards America or its affiliates as we spread freedom around the globe.
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Old 06-14-2015, 02:16 PM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

They will probably join al-Qaeda in Yemen fighting the Houthis. Maybe that's the plan, Saudi Arabia fights the Houthis so al-Qaeda is on their side again...
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Old 05-21-2017, 06:21 AM
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Default Re: Hunger strike at Guantanamo?

Since the last time I posted here, there have been more releases:
2015 saw six more releases and three transfers; 2016 saw 27 releases, 19 transfers, and one asylum; 2017 so far has had ten temporary residences, three transfers, and one repatriation.

Victims of mistaken identity among the 10 sent from Guantánamo to Oman Miami Herald, January 2017:
Quote:
The Arabian Sea nation of Oman has taken in eight Yemenis and two Afghans from Guantánamo, the Pentagon said Tuesday, including several men cleared for release for years who were mistakenly profiled as captives of consequence.
More recent news was regarding Abu Zubaydah. Newsweek (opinion) May 20, 2017:
Abu Zubaydah, the first documented case of US prisoner torture by the CIA after 9/11, declined to testify in a pretrial hearing over the treatment of another detainee, Ramzi bin al-Shibh (designated by the US Government as a 9/11 conspirator) who claims he was psychologically tortured at Guantánamo's Camp 7.

Quote:
The CIA nabbed Zubaydah in Pakistan on March 28, 2003. Immediately after his capture, U.S. government officials announced he was a top lieutenant in Al-Qaeda and number three in the group’s chain of command. Zubaydah spent the next three and a half years in CIA custody, being moved to several top secret prisons, or black sites, around the world. During that time, he was waterboarded 83 times, among other “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

On September 9, 2006, U.S. military authorities took him out of CIA custody and moved him to the American prison in Guantánamo Bay Cuba. I was a guard at Gitmo, as it’s often called, and took part in the operation to move Zubaydah to Camp 7.

Months later, the U.S. government changed their story about Zubaydah. Now, he wasn’t Osama bin Laden’s lieutenant or even a member of Al-Qaeda, he was a “terrorist facilitator” (whatever that means).

Today, Zubaydah, remains behind bars in Gitmo, even though Washington has never charged him with a crime. He is one 41 men still detained at the facility.
So Guantanamo currently houses 41 prisoners, of which ten are charged with war crimes but not yet sentenced. 26 are in indefinite detention, which means they are being held in legal limbo- the evidence against them is tainted by torture, or is unverifiable in court- but rather than follow rule of law, the US decided to imprison them without trial, recourse, release date, or rights. Five men are cleared for release but the US government hasn't worked out nations willing to take the prisoners and uphold security guarantees.
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Old 05-14-2019, 03:29 AM
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April 29, 2019: Guantanamo Bay prison commander John Ring fired
Quote:
Washington -- Military officials say the commander of the task force that runs the prison at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been fired for a "loss of confidence in his ability to command."

A statement from U.S. Southern Command says Navy Rear Adm. John Ring was relieved of those duties Saturday. The facility's deputy commander, Army Brig. Gen. John Hussey, has been designated as acting commander.
The article goes on to state that roughly 40 detainees remain at Guantanamo.

Ring was scheduled to leave the post seven weeks after he was relieved; he was relieved after a month-long investigation. This seems intentionally vague yet punitive: if someone's about to retire or step down, I would be interested to know why he was sacked instead, but do not wish to speculate without more info.

Also, here's a longer New Yorker piece {warning soft paywall}from April 15 on Guantanamo and the supposedly high value detainee Mohamedou Salahi, who the US tortured multiple times.
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