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Some force-fed captives are cleared for release from Guantánamo
At least four of the captives being force-fed at Guantánamo were cleared for release years ago.
As of Friday, the U.S. prison in southeast Cuba classified 97 of its 166 captives as hunger strikers, according to Army Lt. Col. Samuel House, a prison spokesman. Navy medical workers were administering tube feedings to 19 of the hunger strikers, five of them at the prison hospital.
Prison officials have refused to name any of the hunger strikers. But the Justice Department has been notifying the attorneys of prisoners who have become so malnourished that they now require the tube feedings.
Attorneys for eight of the men notified The Miami Herald of their identities.
One is Mohammed al-Hamiri, a Yemeni man in his 30s whose New York lawyer, Omar Farah, says he was told by the Justice Department that his client is “on hunger strike and is being force fed.” Hamiri is also one of 55 men that the Justice Department has named, separately, in federal court filings as eligible for release.
In 2009, the Obama administration assembled a Task Force of representatives from federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI and Pentagon, to examine the files of the detainees brought to Guantánamo during the Bush years.
It concluded that 46 of the 166 men now there should be held indefinitely, without trial or charge.
But it found that 56 were eligible for transfer and another 30 might be eligible for transfer if certain conditions were met. The majority are Yemeni men, like Hamiri, whose transfer has been put on hold by a combination of Congressional restrictions on releases and a White House freeze on transfers in particular to Yemen, which has a fervent al-Qaida franchise called Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
More here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/26/18…rylink=cpy
2013-04-26 18:45:13
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