Vol. 73/No. 5      February 9, 2009

“I hope that the new U.S. administration will fulfill its promise to close this prison,” said Castro in a January 22 interview with the Russian news agency Itar-Tass. He said the executive order was “insufficient,” however, and called the presence of the U.S. naval base itself on Cuban territory “a big injustice.”

“We demand that not only this prison but also this base should be closed and the territory it occupies should be returned to its legal owner—the Cuban people,” Castro said.

The naval base on Cuba’s southeast coast was established during the U.S. military occupation of the island at the beginning of the 20th century. Under the terms of the agreement imposed on Cuba, Washington’s occupancy of the base had no time limit and could be ended or modified only by mutual agreement. Since coming to power in 1959 the revolutionary government in Cuba has insisted that the base be closed.

Meanwhile dozens of prisoners remain on hunger strike at the Guantánamo camp. The 45 strikers are protesting the inhumane conditions under which they are kept and their indefinite imprisonment by the U.S. government.

Washington set up the prison camp in Guantánamo seven years ago. Even though the U.S. government has maintained that it is holding “the worst of the worst” at the camp, only about 20 of the remaining prisoners have been charged with any criminal act. The rest continue to languish there without any charges.

To undermine the hunger strikers’ protest, military authorities at the camp are force-feeding at least 31 of them, using “lawful” and “clinically appropriate” means, they claim. The American Civil Liberties Union issued a protest saying force-feeding is a form of torture and a violation of the prisoners’ rights under U.S. and international law.

Prisoners who are forced-fed are masked and strapped to a chair twice a day and fed liquids through tubes inserted in their noses, putting them at risk of infections and lung collapse, according to lawyers representing Guantánamo prisoners.

The widespread knowledge of the inhumane treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo has become a political liability for the U.S. rulers, as growing numbers oppose arbitrary detention and the use of torture.

In the last year, the U.S. rulers have made a series of moves in an attempt to defuse public outrage over the “excesses” generally attributed to the last Bush administration, in order to clear the road for new attacks on democratic rights.

Earlier in January, Judge Susan Crawford, a senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantánamo, admitted to the press that Mohammed al-Qahtani, who had been accused of planning to take part in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, had been tortured during interrogations at the prison camp. Back in May 2008, Judge Crawford dismissed war crimes charges against him because “his treatment met the legal definition of torture,” she told the Jan. 19, 2009, Washington Post. Even though the charges were dismissed, Crawford ordered that al-Qahtani be kept in Guantánamo.

“The fact is, if the only evidence against an individual is obtained through torture, there is no reliable evidence. Period,” said a statement issued by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents al-Qahtani and other Guantánamo detainees.

The credibility of the “evidence” being used to accuse the detainees of being enemy combatants has increasingly come into question, with courts or tribunals in the last three months declaring that 24 prisoners were improperly held. Since a Supreme Court ruling in June 2008 gave the Guantánamo prisoners the right to have their cases reviewed by federal judges, more than 200 habeas corpus requests have been filed in federal court on behalf of detainees.

“The government’s failure in case after case after case to be able to prove its case calls into question everybody who is there,” Susan Baker Manning, a lawyer for 17 Uighur detainees from China, said to the New York Times. A federal judge ordered their release in October but the Justice Department appealed that decision.

The barrage of criticism against the use of torture and other blatant violations carried out under Washington’s “war on terror” led Obama to sign executive orders on January 22 ordering the closing down of the Guantánamo prison within a year and directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut down its network of secret prisons.

Two days before that, the new administration also ordered an immediate halt to proceedings to prosecute detainees in Guantánamo, and requested a federal district court in Washington to stay habeas corpus requests to allow for a review on whether the prisoners should be transferred, released, or prosecuted.

“It only took days to put these men in Guantánamo; it shouldn’t take a year to get them out,” said Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Obama’s order does not affect some 600 people detained from the “antiterror war” who are being held at the prison on the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. That prison is being expanded to hold 1,100 prisoners.
 
 
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Havana: panel to feature book on U.S., world politics
Cuba: former sugar workers discuss challenges of boosting food production
Workers at Havana province farm co-op assess progress in making
transition to new jobs growing food crops to reduce dependence on imports
U.S. troops out of Guantánamo!  
 
 
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