Camp x-ray prisoners go on hunger strike in turban protest
Nearly 90 al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners at Camp X-Ray were still believed to be on hunger strike today, despite a concession by their American guards over the wearing of turbans.
Incensed that two guards stripped a detainee of his turban during prayer, nearly two-thirds of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba refused lunch yesterday and chanted: ‘‘God is great’’ in Arabic, in their first mass protest since arriving at the base.
In addition, some detainees pushed sheets, blankets, sleeping mats and other items through the small openings in the chain-link walls of their cells in protest, Marine Maj Stephen Cox, the detention mission spokesman, said.
Tension has been building among the 300 inmates from 32 countries who have been held at Camp X-Ray, the remote US naval base in eastern Cuba, since January.
In recent days, some have been ignoring a taped call to prayer and instead have picked individual detainees to announce and lead prayer, which Muslims do five times a day.
A week ago there was ‘‘a disturbance’’ when a guard doing a random search of a cell inadvertently dropped a copy of the Koran, the sacred text of Islam.
‘‘There is an underlying tension associated with the uncertainty of their future: what is going to happen?’’ Cox said.
Brig Gen Mike Lehnert, the Marine commanding the detention mission, addressed detainees last night and sought to answer their concerns.
‘‘He told them at this point he could not to tell them how long they will be here or what will happen to them in the future,’’ Cox said. But ‘‘Gen Lehnert also told the detainees that they will be judged fairly’’ when the time comes.
Lehnert, using the camp loudspeaker, announced he would allow the detainees to wear turbans but, Cox explained, ‘‘we will reserve the right to inspect (turbans) at any time’’.
He promised the military would respect detainees’ religion, their observance of their religion, and the Koran. Later reporters could see several detainees wearing turbans fashioned from white bed sheets. Nevertheless 88 detainees refused their evening meal last night even after Lehnert’s address, Cox said.
The detainees have told a duty officer their protest was in response to an incident that took place on Tuesday, Cox said. Two military guards ordered an inmate to remove a turban he donned during prayers, but the inmate ignored the order, he said. Even after a translator repeated the same order, the inmate refused to acknowledge it.
The guards, concerned the prisoner might be hiding a weapon, shackled him and then stripped off the turban, Cox said.
He said 159 detainees skipped lunch and 109 skipped dinner on Wednesday. Yesterday, 107 skipped breakfast and 194 refused lunch.
Medics have been monitoring the detainees and are prepared to feed them intravenously if needed, Cox said.
Amnesty International said the protest ‘‘highlights the dangers of the legal limbo into which the prisoners have been thrown’’.
‘‘This latest development underscores the urgent need for the United States to acknowledge that all of the prisoners are covered by the Geneva Conventions, and to ensure that they are granted due process rights, including the right to challenge their continued detention,’’ Amnesty spokesman Alistair Hodgett said in Washington.
The military says the prisoners are fighters of the international al-Qaida terrorist network and the deposed Afghan Taliban regime that harboured it.
US officials say they are determining whether and how to prosecute the men, and that those not tried by a military tribunal would either be prosecuted in a US court, returned to their home countries for prosecution, released outright or held indefinitely.
Officials say the men pose a danger not only to the troops but also to themselves. Some Islamic groups preach that dying in a holy war guarantees a place in heaven - the mantra of suicide bombers in Israel and that of the hijackers who flew passenger jets into the World Trade Centre towers and the Pentagon on September 11.
