Guantanamo hunger strike grows; 3 captives hospitalized [View all]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/25/186849/guantanamo-hunger-strike-grows.html



Guantanamo Bay Cuba

Guantanamo hunger strike grows; 3 captives hospitalized
By CAROL ROSENBERG | The Miami Herald
Posted on Monday, March 25, 2013

MIAMI — Navy medical staff at Guantanamo counted 28 of the 166 war-on-terror captives as Pentagon-defined "hunger strikers," the prison said Monday, reporting an increase over the weekend that included three men being treated at the prison hospital.

A total of 10 of the hunger strikers were getting liquid nutrition, which under prison camp protocol is fed to a captive who's been shackled into a restraint chair and had a feeding tube snaked up his nose into his stomach.

The three at the hospital were receiving tube feedings and intravenous drips, said Navy Capt. Robert Durand, the detention center spokesman who on Friday reported 26 hunger strikers, eight on tube feedings and two hospitalized.

Hunger strike figures have grown steadily in the 10 days since the detention center acknowledged a strike was under way at a communal prison called Camp 6, until recently Guantanamo's most populous prison camp by far. Lawyers for the detainees say it was triggered by an early February shakedown of the cells at Camp 6 that included what the captives considered poor treatment of their Qurans.