Troops forcibly move hunger strikers into cells
By CAROL ROSENBERG
April 13, 2013
U.S. forces raided Guantanamo’s prison camp early Saturday and systematically emptied communal cellblocks in an effort to end a three-month-old protest prisoners said was sparked by mistreatment of the Quran, the military said.
“Some detainees resisted with improvised weapons, and in response, four less-than-lethal rounds were fired,” according to a statement issued by the prison camps at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. “There were no serious injuries to guards or detainees.”
The secret pre-dawn operation took place hours after delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross left the remote island prison and during a blackout of news media access to the crisis in the prison camps.
Lawyers for the detainees had described a widespread hunger strike by the majority of the 166 captives begun after a particular aggressive cell search Feb. 6. The military denied that the Quran was mistreated in what it called routine searches. The military also said the food strike was more modest, but that in the course of the protest that captives had systematically disobeyed communal camp rules by covering surveillance cameras in individual cells, refusing for weeks to admit food carts to the cellblocks and defying the instructions of the predominantly U.S. Army guard force.
The prison, called Camp 6, had at one time had 130 captives living in pods — praying together, eating together and having around the clock access to an open-air recreation yard. By the time of the Saturday raid, the communal prison population had been winnowed to about 80 captives. By midday Saturday they were all confined to single-cell maximum security lockups.
“In order to reestablish proper observation, the guards entered the Camp 6 communal living spaces to transition detainees into single cells, remove obstructions to cameras, windows and partitions, and to assess the medical condition of each detainee,” the prison said.
An International Red Cross spokesman, Simon Schorno, said the organization “was not involved in any way in this operation and therefore will not comment on its objectives, the way it was conducted or the detainees' response to it.”
By CAROL ROSENBERG
April 13, 2013
U.S. forces raided Guantanamo’s prison camp early Saturday and systematically emptied communal cellblocks in an effort to end a three-month-old protest prisoners said was sparked by mistreatment of the Quran, the military said.
“Some detainees resisted with improvised weapons, and in response, four less-than-lethal rounds were fired,” according to a statement issued by the prison camps at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. “There were no serious injuries to guards or detainees.”
The secret pre-dawn operation took place hours after delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross left the remote island prison and during a blackout of news media access to the crisis in the prison camps.
Lawyers for the detainees had described a widespread hunger strike by the majority of the 166 captives begun after a particular aggressive cell search Feb. 6. The military denied that the Quran was mistreated in what it called routine searches. The military also said the food strike was more modest, but that in the course of the protest that captives had systematically disobeyed communal camp rules by covering surveillance cameras in individual cells, refusing for weeks to admit food carts to the cellblocks and defying the instructions of the predominantly U.S. Army guard force.
The prison, called Camp 6, had at one time had 130 captives living in pods — praying together, eating together and having around the clock access to an open-air recreation yard. By the time of the Saturday raid, the communal prison population had been winnowed to about 80 captives. By midday Saturday they were all confined to single-cell maximum security lockups.
“In order to reestablish proper observation, the guards entered the Camp 6 communal living spaces to transition detainees into single cells, remove obstructions to cameras, windows and partitions, and to assess the medical condition of each detainee,” the prison said.
An International Red Cross spokesman, Simon Schorno, said the organization “was not involved in any way in this operation and therefore will not comment on its objectives, the way it was conducted or the detainees' response to it.”
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