Court to consider Guantanamo access petition

[cal04]

A federal judge has convened an emergency hearing to consider a defence request for access to prisoners on hunger strike at the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Centre for Constitutional Rights says lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have filed an emergency petition seeking immediate access to the military prison to ensure their clients are receiving adequate medical treatment.

Judge Gladys Kessler, of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, has scheduled a hearing on the petition for today. According to defence lawyers, as many as 200 prisoners have taken part in a more than two-month-long hunger strike at the prison. The prison is home to more than 500 people being held without charges as enemy combatants in the US war on terrorism.

Pentagon officials describe the protest as a rolling hunger strike in which rotating groups of detainees have refused food. Many have been hospitalised and fed through feeding tubes. Besides access to Guantanamo, defence lawyers are demanding records of the prisoners' medical treatment, meal schedules, punishment and hospitalisation. The petition also seeks copies of policies and actions taken by prison authorities during the current and previous hunger strikes, and telephone access between counsel and clients, and between prisoners and their families.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1481971.htm

[Just Me]

1. When is the freakin' judiciary going to demand, at least, some,...

,...evidence of whether these people even qualify as "enemy combatants"? I mean, damn, they are simply picked up here or in another country without any goshdamn threshhold demanded of this f*cked-up DoD to prove these people should be held without any process, whatsoever.

It pretty clear that these prisoners are taking their only way out of a lawless situation.

This just makes me so SICK!!! Is this how "democracy" is delivered,...without ANY rule of law?

DAMN!!!

[Just Me]

2. Moreover, I still believe this is a torture camp intended to,...

,...create Rummy's "human intelligence",...only NOT VOLUNTARILY!!! It's a servitude by violent force.