Five critical, 30 force-fed, 102 to 130 taking part – data that makes for grim reading as Shaker and his fellow prisoners enter their 100th Day on hunger strike in Guantanamo.
Despite initially promising reports that Foreign Secretary William Hague was close to making a direct public plea for Shaker Aamer, serious questions have since been raised regarding the government’s commitment to securing his release, after a senior US lawmaker was told by the Pentagon that the UK was in “no rush” to get him out.
More disturbingly, Guantanamo officials have this week confirmed the implementation of a new policy of submitting prisoners to humiliating and degrading cavity searches of their genitals and buttocks prior to legal visits, in what lawyers say is a clear-cut attempt to break the hunger strike. This is in addition to the recent disclosures of a new brutal and dehumanising procedure, as a consortium of 20 human rights organisations and pressure groups, including Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, issued a plea on Monday to the US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel to end the practice of force-feeding in Guantanamo.
Following Obama’s renewal of his years-old pledge to close Guantanamo, Attorney General Eric Holder has this Tuesday made public his intention to revive a vacant position coordinating policy for Guantanamo and is “looking at candidates”.
But with little substantive progress being made, time is running out for the prisoners; yet despite the increasing sense of desperation, Shaker, writing in the Mail on Sunday, still strives to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Join people around the world in taking a stand for justice as we mark the 100th day of the current hunger strike and over 11 years of indefinite detention without charge or trial, in a global weekend of action.
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Forwarded from: SAVE SHAKER AAMER CAMPAIGN (SSAC) – www.saveshaker.org
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Forwarded by IHRC solely for informational purposes, please contact source website for more information
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Holy Qur’an: Chapter 4, Verse 75
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