Wednesday night we talked with another Guantanamo attorney,
Ramzi Kassem, who represents several men, one of whom is on long-term hunger
strike. The first, and last, messages he gave us, as we planned for protests
around the world today, is that the prisoners, including his clients, really
follow our protests. Many of them had previously felt, understandably
because of the way news is covered here, that everyone in the U.S. supports
their abuse at Guantanamo.
They will want to know all about the
protests, we were told. So as people gather, keep this in mind: the prisoners
themselves, whose mass collective action in 2013 broke Guantanamo back into the
news, will be watching. The release of the 12 men who have left since May
23, 2013, is due first of all to the prisoners' hunger strike, and also to us
for amplifying the strike, and for persisting.
In important news, a federal judge ruled this week that the government has to
make available dozens of secret video tapes of the forcible cell extraction and
forced-feeding of Guantanamo hunger striker Abu Wa’el Dhiab. He is challenging
the government's measures aimed at combating the mass political action prisoners
have taken to call attention to their ongoing torture and indefinite detention
there.
Officials no
longer disclose how many inmates are on hunger strike. Here, a restraint chair
used for force-feeding. Jason Leopold/Al Jazeera America
Attorney Jonathan Eisenberg represents Dhiab. He told Al Jazeera that “the
lengths to which the Obama administration is going to keep its tactics and
procedures with detainees a secret speaks to the inhumane conditions at the
base... The more that comes to light about Guantánamo Bay, the sooner it will be
closed. The government’s extraordinary efforts to maintain a veil of secrecy
about the place continued today, and we’re trying to remove that veil... It
really makes you wonder what on earth is going on there that they don’t want the
American people to know.”
From Democracy Now!:
“In one of the great mysteries of the U.S. military
prison at Guantánamo Bay, three prisoners, two from Saudi Arabia and one from
Yemen, died the night of June 9, 2006. Authorities at Guantánamo said the three
men -- Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, Salah Ahmed al-Salami and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi
-- had killed themselves. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry
Harris, described their deaths as an ‘act of asymmetrical warfare waged against
us.’
“But explosive new evidence shows there may have been a cover up on
how the men actually died. Recently discovered pages from the Naval Criminal
Investigative Service suggest that the men died not from suicide, but torture.
The new evidence includes an eyewitness account of Al-Zahrani on the night of
his death, which indicates he may have died from torture and suffocation during
questioning at a secret black site facility at Guantánamo known as Camp No, or
Penny Lane...”
“Your commander in chief is the biggest
drone killer in the world. Don't do drone killings.”
This is
the message we're taking to the graduates at West Point
next Wednesday.
The protest has special meaning for those in
the US Army because the MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone, a more deadly version of the
infamous Predator drone, is being integrated into use in every Army division.
Gray Eagles are now being used in Afghanistan, where the United States is
conducting intensive drone attacks in anticipation of a reduction of US ground
forces.
We liked David's Swanson's piece on the infamous “drone
memo” released by the White House, Why I Don't Want to See the Drone Memo:
“A president is not legally allowed to invent
criteria for killing people. Never mind that he doesn't meet his own criteria.
We should not be so indecent or so lawless as to engage in such a conversation.
We should not want to see the blood-soaked memo.”
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