"It changes every day," said the head physician of the camp's hospital, who wants to remain unnamed. And the prisoners could decide to resume eating voluntarily, they maintain - even while they are fettered to a chair several times a day to be fed. The military doctors, for their part, say they are concerned with saving the detainees' lives. Thirteen of the prisoners being force-fed in the ongoing hunger strike have voiced their protests in a public letter and expressed their mistrust of military physicians. Hunger-strikers are tethered to this chair for forced-feeding via a nose tube to the stomach Image: DW/S.
The Guantanamo administration denied such treatment. The hunger strike was initially a response to the Guantanamo military's attempt to search prisoners' Korans during cell inspections, with detainees protesting to the camp administration what they saw as disrespect toward their holy book. Whether the five prisoners who allegedly helped orchestrate the September 11th attacks are among the hunger-strikers is not something we were able to discover here. More than 40 of them are being force-fed - under torment, as the prisoners and their attorneys have reported to the media. Of the 166 detainees, more than one hundred are on a hunger strike, and the number is growing.
The prisoners "have renewed hope and believe something will happen now," he said.īut security at Guantanamo hasn't changed as a result of the president's announcement. He's a member of the army who advises the camp administration and appears to have the most contact with the prisoners.
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Zak, who has worked at Guantanamo for the past eight years but doesn't want to divulge his full name, confirmed that. "The prisoners are talking about it, and they seem to be glad that the president mentioned it," he said. Still, many prisoners have gotten wind of the US president's recently renewed promise to push forward in closing down Guantanamo, said prison commander Colonal John Bogdan. They may leave their cells only rarely - shackled and under close supervision when, for instance, they want to take a shower. We don't know how many of the cells are inhabited, but we do know that all of those sitting in this block are in solitary confinement. Prisoners are rarely permitted to leave their cells Image: DW/G.Schliess Each male prisoner prays in his own cell. Images our cameraman has recorded are checked at the end of the day since faces and certain security units are not permitted to be filmed or photographed, and certainly not the 166 prisoners.īut at 5 o'clock in the morning in Block B, the Muslim morning call to prayers can be heard. They are careful that we see only what they want us to see. That hand is the only thing we will see of the prisoners on this press tour through the detention center, as soldiers watch our every move. Then, we see a hand poke out of one of the cell doors, holding a water bottle. They move silently from cell to cell, looking inside each one. We're in Block B, as soldiers patrol along the dark corridor. It's eerily quiet in the early morning at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba.
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