Six Months on, Hunger Strike Roils Guantanamo

Guantanamo detainees are marking six months of an unprecedented hunger strike that has trained attention on the more than 150 men held at the U.S. military prison without charge or trial.

The strike began on February 6 as a spontaneous reaction to a cell sweep in which guards allegedly mishandled copies of the Koran, but soon grew into a mass protest against the legal limbo within the walls of the War on Terror prison.

The strike helped push U.S. President Barack Obama in May to renew his four-year-old vow to shut down the controversial facility in Cuba.

But many of the legal and political obstacles to closing the facility remain, meaning that dozens of detainees who have been force-fed through nasal tubes are no nearer to returning home.

As the majority of the 166 prisoners endured the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan beneath a scorching Caribbean sun, just 57 remained on hunger strike, down from an all-time high of 108 in June.

"The hunger strike is unprecedented in its length and its magnitude," said Captain Robert Durand, a prison spokesman.

"What they want is not to be detained... That is different from previous hunger strikes. In 2005 and 2006, they were talking about the conditions of detention."

The prison counts as being on hunger strike those who have skipped nine consecutive meals.

Durand argues that the number of strikers has dwindled as detainees have come to believe their aims are being met.

"They've heard the president speak, they've heard their attorneys talk, they've seen the naming of the new ambassador to start the diplomatic process," he said.

"We think they feel they have achieved their aims."

David Remes, a defense lawyer who represents 15 detainees, points to a number of factors behind the decline in strike participants.

"I assume that many men just could not continue to endure the physical or mental hardship," he said.

"But I also suspect many men feel they made their point. The strike refocused national attention on Guantanamo and spurred President Obama into action," he added.

"To this extent, the men have succeeded, but their success cost them dearly. The only way to solve the Guantanamo problem is for President Obama to release detainees and forswear indefinite detention."

At the end of May Obama appointed a special envoy to coordinate the release of prisoners and announced the lifting of a moratorium on repatriating 56 Yemenis, but none have yet been released.

The moratorium was imposed after al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula -- the terror network's Yemeni affiliate, which counts former Guantanamo prisoners among its ranks -- was linked to a foiled plot to down a US passenger plane in December 2009.

AQAP is widely seen as al-Qaida's most sophisticated offshoot, and has more recently been linked to a worldwide terror alert and the closing of some two dozen U.S. diplomatic posts earlier this week.

Of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo, 86 prisoners of various nationalities have been approved for release by U.S. authorities.

The White House said last month it would return two Algerian detainees to their homeland as part of efforts to eventually close the facility set up in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The prison was intended to hold al-Qaida suspects, but eventually received hundreds of men picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan or handed over by foreign governments.

Obama first vowed to close the facility in 2009, but the administration's efforts have been hindered by Congress, which has barred the transfer of any detainees to U.S. soil for trial or detention.

Meanwhile, around 40 hunger strikers are being strapped to chairs and force-fed, and at least one is currently hospitalized.

In a searing first-person account published in the New York Times earlier this year, detainee Samir Naji al-Hasan Moqbel, who has been held at Guantanamo for over 11 years, described the feedings.

"As (the tube) was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn't. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach," he wrote.

"I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone."

Military officials deny the force-feeding is painful and insist that most prisoners either eat voluntarily, or acquiesce to the nasal tube feedings.

Durand admitted that strikers "lose the right to communal" living, and that some could abandon the strike in a bid to see those privileges reinstated.

But he added officials had withdrawn the privileges as a safety measure, after detainees destroyed most of the security cameras in communal areas during a protest in April.

The spokesman added that officials had offered a "Ramadan pardon" for those who ended their strike, restoring their right to communal living.

"Ramadan ends this week-end... it remains to be seen if some will continue to stay out of the hunger strike or return," Durand said.