US Denies Report of Mass Guantanamo Hunger Strike
Source: Associated Press
US Denies Report of Mass Guantanamo Hunger Strike
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico March 5, 2013 (AP)
Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay prisoners said Monday that a widespread hunger strike was under way over deteriorating conditions, but a prison spokesman denied there was any mass protest at the U.S. base in Cuba.
Attorneys for more than a dozen of the prisoners said in a letter to the prison commander, Rear Adm. John Smith, and released to the media that "all but a few men" have been on hunger strike for three weeks. They said the situation "appears to be rapidly deteriorating and reaching a potentially critical level."
The lawyers said the protest was prompted by a series of searches that began on Feb. 6 in which a number of personal items, including religious CDs, blankets and legal mail, were confiscated, and included what they felt were overly intrusive searches of their Qurans by Arabic translators that amounted to desecration.
"As their health has deteriorated, we have received reports of men coughing up blood, being hospitalized, losing consciousness, becoming weak and fatigued, and being moved to Camp V for observation," the lawyers wrote, referring to a camp that is used in part to hold men who violate prison rules.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-denies-report-mass-guantanamo-hunger-strike-18652504
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