Andy Worthington's Blog, page 134

Guantánamo Hunger Striker Abu Wa’el Dhiab: “The Mistreatment Now is More Severe than During Bush”

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us – just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Last week, lawyers for four hunger striking prisoners at Guantánamo asked a judge to order the government to stop their force-feeding and forced medication. The men — Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, Ahmed Belbacha, and Nabil Hadjarab, both Algerians, and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian — are part of a prison-wide hunger strike that began in February 6, and that involves 106 of the remaining 166 prisoners according to the authorities, and at least 120 according to the prisoners.

45 of those men — including Ahmed Belbacha and Nabil Hadjarab — are being force-fed, and all four are amongst the 86 men (out of 166 prisoners in total) who were cleared for release by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force in January 2010, but are still held.

This is partly because of onerous restrictions on the release of prisoners imposed by Congress, but President Obama promised to overcome these restrictions and to resume releasing prisoners in a major speech on national security issues on May 23, and he has the power to do so via a waiver in the legislation that allows him to bypass Congress if he regards it as being “in the national security interests of the United States.”

Sadly, he has not yet exercised that option, and not a single prisoner has been released since his promise was made.

After the motion was submitted, by lawyers at the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, and Jon  B. Eisenberg, an attorney in Oakland, California, we published the disturbing declaration made by Ahmed Belbacha during a phone conversation with Cori Crider, one of his lawyers and the Strategic Director of Reprieve.

To follow up, we’re publishing the powerful declaration made by Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a 41-year old Syrian who had run a food import business with his family in Kabul before the 9/11 attacks, and who is one of the numerous prisoners in Guantánamo, past and present, to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the US went fishing for Muslim prisoners.

Having escaped to Pakistan with his family, he was seized in Lahore, in one of the opportunistic raids that showed the Americans that Pakistan was on their side in the “war on terror,” and that also secured millions of dollars for the Pakistani government, as former President Pervez Musharraf boasted in his autobiography in 2006.

I hope you will find Abu Wa’el Dhiab’s declaration to be a compelling indictment of the injustice of Guantánamo. He is not currently being force-fed, because he has such severe back pain that he is confined to a wheelchair, but he has been force-fed during this long-running hunger strike, and his descriptions of it are harrowing.

Unfortunately, on Monday, Judge Gladys Kessler, in the District Court in Washington D.C., was obliged to turn down Mr. Dhiab’s request for assistance. A ruling from 2009, tying Judge Kessler’s hands, stipulates:

[N]o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant.

Although unable to stop the force-feeding, Judge Kessler nevertheless secured a moral victory, explaining that, although she was “constrained” to deny the application, she recognised that Mr. Dhiab “has set out in great detail in his papers what appears to be a consensus that force-feeding of prisoners violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.”

She also made a point of telling President Obama that the solution to these men’s plight is in his hands. After stating, “Even though this Court is obligated to dismiss the Application for lack of jurisdiction, and therefore lacks any authority to rule on Petitioner’s request, there is an individual who does have the authority to address the issue,” she noted that, in his major speech on national security on May 23, President Obama had said “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike … Is that who we are? Is that something that our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.”

She then explained:

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that “[t]he President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States …” It would seem to follow, therefore, that the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority — and power — to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

In response, Jon Eisenberg “called Kessler’s decision ‘remarkable’ for its harsh assessment of the practice and the president,” as the Washington Post described it. Eisenberg added, “A federal judge has tossed the ball in the president’s court. What is he going to do about it?”

To add to the pressure on President Obama, two senior Democratic Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin, have written to President Obama to follow up on Judge Kessler’s complaints.

“We write to urge you to use your Presidential authority to end the unnecessary force-feedings of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility,” their letter begins, and it goes on to say:

We … encourage you to direct the Department of Defense to stop conducting such large-scale force-feedings and, where force-feeding is medically necessary to save a detainee’s life, to observe the protections required at US Bureau of Prisons facilities. It is our understanding that the US federal prison guidelines for force-feedings include several safeguards and oversight mechanisms that are not in place at Guantánamo Bay.

They also wrote:

The growing problem of hunger strikes is due to the fact that many detainees have remained in legal limbo for more than a decade and have given up hope. This should be alarming to all of us, and it is imperative that the Administration outline a formal process to permanently close the Guantánamo facility as soon as possible. We look forward to continue working with you to achieve that end.

Moreover, Sens. Feinstein and Durbin also raised the force feeding issue on Tuesday at hearing to discuss the proposed confirmation of James Comey as the director of the FBI. On that occasion, Sen. Feinstein said, “We have 86 detainees who are cleared for transfer. They are no threat to this country. They have been adjudged so. And they have no place to go. So this is an expression of acute hopelessness in the forced feeding. In my view, this is inhumane. I’m very concerned about it, because it’s the wrong thing to do.”

Sen. Durbin added, “I can tell you that the members of the Navy and the Coast Guard who are part of it are at their wit’s end as to what to do with these detainees, many of whom have been judged no threat to the United States, and have been held indefinitely. I think it’s time for us to move the issue.”

If President Obama needs any further impetus to act, he should really listen to the prisoners. This, for example, is what Abu Wa’el Dhiab had to say: “Why do you think I am on hunger strike in the first place? If I die, it is not because I killed myself. The US government killed me. The people who tortured me, and kept me here for nearly twelve years with no charges, who torture us in the chair every day, and who abuse our families overseas, are to blame. If I die, it is they who are responsible. I am prepared to take this risk.”

Abu Wael Dhiab’s declaration from Guantánamo

Submitted by Cori Crider

I spoke to Mr. Dhiab by telephone on May 30, 2013. He instructed me that he wished to join the motion. Mr. Dhiab has been hunger-striking and had been force-fed, but explained to me on the call that because of severe pain in his back and ribs he was currently taking Ensure himself ‘so that the ERF team [the Extreme Reaction Force team, consisting of five or more armored individuals who punish any infringement of the rules with violence] do not come and strap me into the chair.’ He added that if the force-feeding were enjoined, he would resume the strike. I paraphrase his statements and instructions below.

The search

Mr. Dhiab said the intrusive searching persists. “Now I don’t really care about what they do. I am willing to take off all my clothes. All I care about is my freedom, my dignity, and my honor, and my release.

“Sometimes I have met them completely naked, because the way they are treating us now is beyond dignity.

“But yes, they searched me once on my way to speak to you — in the way that is now known all over the world.

“After what has happened in the past — all the torture and humiliation — I now hardly care. I would give them all my clothes if that is what it takes to make them pay attention.”

Instruction to counsel

Mr. Dhiab said: “I agree to join this motion. I want to participate and for the force-feeding and the forced medicating to be stopped. I want to protest the various kinds of torture they have used on me, and continue to use on me.”

He added: “This is my life. I should have the freedom to decide what I want to do with it. If I want to go on hunger strike, that is my business. They should never force feed us. I am on a peaceful protest. The US government pretends that they give freedom to people, but in this way they are taking away my freedom. The whole world knows that we are protesting peacefully and they pretend they want to take care of our health. It is our health, to do with as we see fit.

“In fact, what the US government is doing here makes me feel they have lost sight of their principles, of the high values that they claim to support. They are killing us anyway by holding us here. They are torturing us every day, supposedly to preserve our health.”

I explained he needed to understand that were he to win his motion and the tubes were taken out, he would have two choices: to eat, or to die. “Of course I know the consequences of refusing the food. And I will not eat. Why do you think I am on hunger strike in the first place? If I die, it is not because I killed myself. The US government killed me. The people who tortured me, and kept me here for nearly twelve years with no charges, who torture us in the chair every day, and who abuse our families overseas, are to blame. If I die, it is they who are responsible. I am prepared to take this risk.”

Reasons for striking

“I am on hunger strike because I want a resolution to my case. Let me be frank, I have been here for so many years for no reason. I have been cleared for release under Obama’s administration. It is also claimed by lawyers and the government people here that there are third countries that are willing to take me and that the State Department are trying to find a host country for me to be resettled in.

“I want to see my wife and children after this captivity and take them to my chest. I want them to feel that their father is with them — that they are not orphans, that their father is alive. I want and demand my stolen freedom and the peace that I am looking for. I want to leave to get medical treatment, and meet my dear wife and sons.

“We have given up the very things which are important: food and drink. And we have done so to get answers to our questions: What is our guilt and what is our crime? Are we going to see justice done in this place or will our painful fate remain unknown? Is it justice that awaits, or injustice with no reason but that our religion and beliefs differ? Where is the freedom to follow one’s religion which settles the heart? Where is freedom of speech?

“I am demanding my freedom. This is my right. I have the right to protest peacefully without punishment.”

Experience of force feeding

“What the authorities are doing is hurting me. They are abusing me under the pretext of assisting my health. My not eating is more merciful and easier than their treatment of me.

“Feeding takes place on a medical torture chair, and the way they fed me only hurts me more and added to my back pain.

“They put me in the chair in a savage way which did not occur in the days of Bush. They torture me in the name of feeding and fear for my health, even though I can’t breathe or move. The riot team holds me from every limb even when I am being fed. As for the one who is holding my head, he chokes me further.

“Straps and shackles are put in place and only the chains on the hands are released. Then all the straps are tightened forcefully so that I cannot move or breathe. In addition to this, there are six riot force members: one holding the head and putting his fingers on the throat and neck from below the chin with severe pressure, the second and third hold the hands, the fourth and fifth hold the legs, and then the nurse inserts the tube. If you are in pain it is natural for your head to move, so they shout ‘don’t resist.’

“Sitting causes me severe back pain, as they know. Yet they feed me slowly so that I stay for as long as possible in the chair. This seems to be in order to pressure me. My weight has dropped and now fluctuates with the feeding and my illness.

“I suffer from general muscular pain, kidney pain, and severe burning in my bladder. My right leg is really weak and hurting me; my back is also hurting me a lot and as a result I am unable to sit.”

On the call on May 30, 2013, he also explained that because of pain in his back and the terror of being ERFed to go to force-feeding he had started taking Ensure: “For several days now, I have severe pain in my back. I have problems with my neck and headaches. For several days I haven’t left the cell for feeding. I think this is still force- feeding, because if I don’t drink the Ensure they will bring the ERF team to get me out. So I have taken Ensure inside my cell and drink it.

“The reason I want to stop the ERF is because a while ago, they hurt a rib in my chest. After it healed, the ERF hurt the same place again. It happened over and over again and the injury gets worse. That is the reason I want to stop the ERFing to the feeding.

“I take Ensure every two or three days. Then the ERF force me to the chair of force-feeding. They ERF me twice outside the cell and they ERF me twice inside for feedings, and that hurt me very much.

“They do these things to us to pressure us to break the strike. They bring Ensure and tell me: ‘If you don’t take the Ensure, we’ll take you to the chair.’ They do this two times a day. By contrast, if I don’t take the Ensure, the ERF will come four times — two times out, and two times in. The corpsman comes to make the ‘request’ that I take Ensure.

“The ERF never stops. They have been doing that since the beginning of my hunger strike. When I got very sick and I could not take it anymore, I decided to stay in my cell on Ensure for a couple of days. The pain has been too severe. I am not afraid of them and I am not avoiding them. It would be an honor to die.

“I am not the only one who suffers from the ERF. The mistreatment now is more severe than during Bush. Many of people are being ERFed — some five times a day. The idea of this is to control us. Shaker Aamer from Britain is ERFed every time they give him water or food. They ERF him to and fro. Everybody is suffering from the abuse, control and humiliation.”

He reiterated that the only reason he was taking Ensure was to avoid being forced into the chair by the ERF or FCE team. If the force-feeding is enjoined, he will be able to resume his peaceful strike.

Reglan

I asked whether he had heard of Reglan, and he stated he had not. He did indicate he felt ill after feedings, however.

“I get sick in the stomach when they feed me. The force-feeding makes me feel ill but so far I did not throw up. However, I haven’t moved my bowel for 18 days. They know this. I cannot take laxatives because of my kidney and bladder problems. Still, I think there is no doubt that they would give me medicine without asking me.

“I am sure they could be giving Reglan without telling us. They grind up medicine and mix it with the food. We know that. We do not trust them. The doctor who treats us is not a real doctor. A doctor renders humanitarian services. The doctor who watches his patient suffer and does nothing is no doctor. He is more criminal than the military authorities.”

He concluded our call by stating: “The issue now is: why am I here? We have heard all of this before. The lawyers have been with us for four years and still the government does not want to release us. They are just giving us anaesthesia to wait — but there is no action.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Judge Recognizes Force-Feeding as Torture, But Tells Guantánamo Prisoner Only President Obama Can Deal with the Hunger Strike

In the District Court in Washington D.C. on Monday, Judge Gladys Kessler turned down a motion calling for her to order the government to stop force-feeding prisoners at Guantánamo and giving them medication without their consent. The motion was submitted on behalf of four prisoners taking part in the prison-wide hunger strike that began in February, who are amongst the 86 cleared prisoners still held (out of 166 prisoners in total), whose release was recommended by an inter-agency task force established by President Obama when he took office in 2009.

According to the government, 106 prisoners are engaged in the hunger strike. The prisoners state that the true number is around 120, but both parties seem to agree that 45 of these men are being force-fed. The government, however, refuses to recognize force-feeding as a horrendous procedure, even though it is recognized as torture by medical professionals, when it involves the force-feeding of mentally competent prisoners.

Judge Kessler is trapped by a legal precedent established by a higher court, the D.C. Circuit Court, but she nevertheless managed to criticize that precedent, and also to mention, and support the universal recognition that force-feeding prisoners “violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.”

She also managed to both criticize President Obama for his inaction, and to point out that, as the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, he has “the authority — and power — to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.”

Judge Kessler delivered her ruling in the case of Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian prisoner cleared for release in 2009 but still held, who is one of four prisoners who submitted the motion last Sunday. The other three cases have yet to be heard, but the outcome can be no different. As Judge Kessler explained in her four-page opinion:

On February 10, 2009, this Court issued Al-Adahi v. Obama … In that case, Petitioner had filed a Renewed Emergency Motion to Enjoin the Force-Feeding to which he was being subjected. For all practical purposes, the facts in Al-Adahi, which the Court found after a long Motion Hearing, are close to identical to the facts presented by Petitioner in this case. In Al-Adahi, the Court concluded that it “lacks jurisdiction and therefore does not have the authority to grant the relief’ being requested … The Court made it perfectly clear in that Opinion that it was required to reach that conclusion “if it is to carry out its obligation to faithfully follow the rule of law.”

Because “[t]here has been no material change in either the background facts or the applicable legal principles since issuance of the Al-Adahi Opinion,” the legal precedent, tying Judge Collyer’s hands, is still as follows:

[N]o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant.

Judge Collyer added, “Consequently, the Court feels just as constrained now, as it felt in 2009, to deny this Petitioner’s Application for lack of jurisdiction.”

In the key passage dealing with force-feeding as “torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment,” Judge Collyer made a point of stating:

The Court also feels constrained, however, to note that Petitioner has set out in great detail in his papers what appears to be a consensus that force- feeding of prisoners violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.

She added that Abu Wa’el Dhiab had cited in detail “statements of the American Medical Association, the World Medical Association, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism condemning the force-feeding of detainees,” and specifically included a quote from the American Medical Association’s letter to the Secretary of Defense on April 25 declaring that the force-feeding of detainees violates “core ethical values of the medical profession.”

Furthermore, she evidently had little time for the government lawyers’ claims that the health care provided to the prisoners “rivals that provided in any community in the United States and is comparable to that afforded to our active duty service members,” and that the prisoners “receive timely, compassionate, quality healthcare and have regular access to primary care and specialist physicians.”

In response, she wrote, in an understated rebuke to the government, “it is perfectly clear from the statements of detainees, as well as the statements from the organizations just cited, that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating, and degrading process.”

In conclusion, she took aim at President Obama. “Even though this Court is obligated to dismiss the Application for lack of jurisdiction, and therefore lacks any authority to rule on Petitioner’s request,” she wrote, “there is an individual who does have the authority to address the issue.”

She continued:

In a speech on May 23, 2013, President Barack Obama stated “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike … Is that who we are? Is that something that our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.”

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that “[t]he President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States …” It would seem to follow, therefore, that the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority — and power — to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

Despite being bound by precedent, Judge Collyer’s opinion is a powerful rebuke to the government, via its lawyers, for claiming that the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo is, at all times, “compassionate,” instead of conceding that it is “torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment,” and to President Obama, as the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, for not using his “authority” and “power” to deal with the hunger strike.

Implicit in her criticism, I believe, was another aspect of President Obama’s speech on May 23, in which he declared, “To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries.” This is a promise he has yet to fulfill by releasing a single one of the 86 cleared prisoners still being held — including Abu Wa’el Dhiab, and the three other men involved in the motion (Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and Ahmed Belbacha and Nabil Hadjarab, both Algerians), who are waiting for a ruling from another judge.

Judge Collyer is part of the establishment she criticizes. When she had the opportunity to review three habeas corpus petitions submitted by prisoners in 2009 and 2010, she turned them all down — even before the Circuit Court rewrote the rules so that it was all but impossible for a habeas petition to be granted.

However, her dissatisfaction with the status quo is evident in her ruling, as, I believe, is her revulsion as an American, and as a human being, for the indefinite detention of all the prisoners at Guantánamo, and the brutal manner in which the hunger strike is being managed.

Summing up Abu Wa’el Dhiab’s predicament in her ruling, she stated, as a matter of fact, “Petitioner has been detained at Guantánamo Bay for 11 years, despite having been cleared for release in 2009. At no time during these 11 years has he had any hearing on the merits of his habeas petition, nor any military commission proceeding to determine the merits of his case. Due to certain actions taken by Congress, Guantánamo Bay has not been closed, and Petitioner’s detention has, for all practical purposes, become indefinite.”

It is important that Judge Collyer mentioned the role of Congress in imposing restrictions preventing the release of prisoners from Guantánamo — even those cleared for release — but it remains true, as she also pointed out, that President Obama has the “authority” and “power” to act.

He needs to do so before any of the men deprived of their rights through a disgraceful ruling in 2009 (the Al-Adahi ruling cited above) die at Guantánamo.

As attorneys wait for the ruling on the other three men’s motion before deciding whether to appeal, Jon Eisenberg, one of the lawyers involved in filing the lawsuit last weekend, told the Miami Herald, “This is quite a statement from a federal judge. She said that force feeding violates international law and medical ethics and she has called on President Obama to do something about it, which is really amazing.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Video: On Day 150 of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike, Andy Worthington Tells RT Why the Prison is a Moral, Legal and Ethical Abomination

Last Friday, on Day 150 of the ongoing hunger strike at Guantánamo, I provided a round-up of the terrible situation at the prison for RT. Interviewed in a studio on a boat on the Thames, while lunchtime drinkers soaked up the sun on the lower decks, where there is a bar, I was asked why it was so hard for the US to release or transfer to the US mainland prisoners that it costs nearly a million dollars each, per year, to hold at Guantánamo.

I explained that, although opposition has been raised by Congress, President Obama has proven to be “unwilling to spend the political capital” to release any of the 86 men (out of 166 in total) who were cleared for release by his inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force three and a half years ago. I spoke about his “fine speech” on May 23 when he said he was going to resume releasing prisoners — but has not released anyone since — and reminded viewers of the “new tyranny” of the US, at a time when, ironically, the nation was celebrating its freedom, 237 years ago, from the tyranny of British rule.

Asked about the force-feeding in Guantánamo, where 45 of the 120 men who have been on a hunger strike for five months are being force-fed, I explained how “medical professionals all agree that it is wrong to force-feed a mentally competent prisoner, and that force-feeding is a form of torture,” but pointed out that allowing prisoners to die would be a PR disaster for the US. I stressed, however, that we always need to look at political issues behind the hunger strike and the force-feeding.

As I stated:

These men are endangering their lives, starving themselves in this way, to demonstrate to the world that a terrible injustice is taking place at Guantánamo, and the solution to that is not whatever the army has to do at Guantánamo; the solution to that is the political one — it’s President Obama and the United States Congress. They’re responsible for keeping people imprisoned at Guantánamo — either men they said they wanted to release or men that they say that they say that they want to put on trial [or hold indefinitely] — and we need to see action.

Asked about where the prisoners would go if Guantánamo were to be closed, I said:

First of all we have to get these 86 cleared men out of Guantánamo and back to their home countries or to other countries if that needs to be arranged. Now, two-thirds of these men are from Yemen and we’re still waiting for an arrangement that says, “Look, if you clear prisoners  and say that they’re going to leave you can’t then turn around and say, ‘oh, but we think Yemen’s not safe.’” Send these people home.

Then we’re left with 80 prisoners. Now the United States has said that 46 of those people it wants to hold indefinitely because it believes they’re dangerous but it doesn’t have evidence that it says it can use in a court of law. That makes that evidence very suspicious to any rational person, I believe. They need to initiate reviews of these men’s cases to look again at what they claim is the evidence.

And they’ve a handful of people there that they say that they’re going to put on trial. They need to get on with those trials. That’s the story, really. According to the authorities, there are only 12 people in total who are going to go on trial, so as far as I can see everyone else needs to be released.

It’s nearly 12 years that this prison has been open. It will be 12 years in January. It’s always been an abomination — morally, legally, ethically. It’s harmful to America’s self-interest. It really is time that the place is closed down.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Video: Rapper Mos Def (Yasiin Bey) Force-Fed Like Guantánamo Prisoners

My friends and colleagues at Reprieve, the legal action charity whose lawyers represent 15 prisoners in Guantánamo, have just launched a campaign, “Stand Fast for Justice,” in which they are encouraging people to fast in solidarity with the prisoners at Guantánamo, 120 of whom are taking part in a hunger strike that is now in its sixth month. As the website states, “Stand for your belief in basic human rights. Fast to relieve an unjustly-treated detainee. Start your own hunger strike in solidarity — for hours or days, any support helps.”

To launch the #Standfast campaign, the rapper and actor Mos Def (now known as Yasiin Bey) agreed to be force-fed according to the Standard Operating Procedure for force-feeding prisoners at Guantánamo, which was obtained in May by Jason Leopold of Al-Jazeera.

The harrowing results are below, in a four-minute film, made by Reprieve and the Bafta award-winning director Asif Kapadia, in which Yasiin Bey found the procedure so harrowing that he was unable to continue with it. As the Guardian described it, “When the first tube was dislodged, he was unable to go ahead with a second attempt by the medical team to insert it.”

Breaking down, he said, “I can’t do it,” and afterwards explained, The first part of it is not that bad but then you get this burning and then it just starts to get really unbearable and it starts to feel like somethings going into your brain, and then it reached the back of my throat, and I really just couldn’t take it.”

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins tomorrow, and, as I noted recently, although the authorities have stated their intention not to force-feed prisoners during daylight hours (barring “unforeseen emergency or operational issues”), it is unclear whether they can manage to force-feed 45 prisoners at night, and, if they can, whether the result will be that the whole prison will become a profoundly unsettling “force-feeding factory,” as Reprieve described it.

As the Guardian also noted:

The “Medical Management Standard Operating Procedure” document leaked from the detention camp defines a hunger striker as a detainee who has missed at least nine consecutive meals or whose weight has fallen to less than 85% of his ideal body weight.

If force feeding is deemed medically necessary, medical personnel shackle the detainee “and a mask is placed over the detainee’s mouth to prevent spitting and biting”. A feeding tube is then passed through the detainee’s nostril into the stomach.

The process takes about 20 to 30 minutes but they can be required to stay in the restraint chair for up to two hours until a chest x-ray confirms the nutrient has reached their stomach.

The prisoner is then removed from restraint chair to “dry cell” where they are observed by a guard for up to an hour “for any indication of vomiting or attempts to induce vomiting”. If they do vomit, they are returned to the restraint chair for the entire duration of the observation period in subsequent feeds.

If they bite the tube, the guards hold their head still for “as long as necessary for the detainee to relax his jaw.”

The passages above are from a Guardian article today which primarily discussed the problems with force-feeding hunger strikers during Ramadan, and, specifically, complaints by Muslim organizations. The article quoted Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest US Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, who said, “We believe it’s wrong to force feed at any time but it is particularly upsetting to do it through Ramadan.” He added, “It’s not just a religious issue, it’s also a human rights issue in violation of international norms and medical ethics.”

Dr. Azzam Tamimi, a Muslim community leader in the UK, also spoke out. “As Ramadan starts, this issue is becoming increasingly embarrassing for the US government,” he said, adding, “it’s about time President Obama took a brave decision to end this in a way that would be appreciated around the Islamic world.”

As the Guardian explained, “Other religious groups have also spoken out against the practice,” explaining that, last month, Bishop Richard Pates, the chair of the Committee on International Justice and Peace for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter to Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, in which he pointed out that the International Committee of the Red Cross opposes force-feeding, and urged, “Rather than resorting to such measures, our nation should first do everything it can to address the conditions of despair that have led to this protest.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Audio: Andy Worthington Speaks about Guantánamo at the “Independence from America” Protest at RAF Menwith Hill, July 4, 2013

Last week, I had the opportunity to join up with a phenomenal collection of activists — from the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) — on top of the Yorkshire Dales at Menwith Hill, an RAF base that acts as a front for the NSA (the US National Security Agency), which has been in charge of the base since 1966 — a very topical arrangement, given the recent revelations about the NSA by former analyst Edward Snowden.

I had been invited — to speak about Guantánamo — by Lindis Percy, a tireless campaigner against militarism, who has been arrested and imprisoned on numerous occasions, and my talk — just over 20 minutes in total — is available here, as an MP3.

An Indymedia page reporting on the event — including the photo above — is here, and it also includes links to some of the other guests, including Salma Yaqoob, psychotherapist, Chair of Birmingham Stop the War and a spokesperson for Birmingham Central Mosque, who gave a great speech.

My talk was, I believe, a useful explanation of why Guantánamo is still open, and why it remains, as it has always been, a moral, legal and ethical abomination, and a place that should be a source of shame to anyone with a shred of decency.

I spoke about the prison’s history, about the ongoing prison-wide hunger strike, now in its sixth month, about the obstacles raised by Congress to prevent the closure of the prison and the release of prisoners, and about the generally lesser-known obstacles raised by President Obama.

I also mentioned other important facts — that 86 of the remaining 166 prisoners were cleared for release three and a half years ago by an inter-agency task force established by the president when he took office, and that one of those men is Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo. I also explained how, despite Congressional obstructions, a waiver exists in the legislation that allows President Obama to bypass Congress if he regards that as being “in the national security interests of the United States.”

That waiver, of course, needs to be used by President Obama, and it needs to be used now.

My thanks to Lindis, and to everyone who took part in the protest; to her husband Christopher, who picked me up at Harrogate station and drove me up to Menwith Hill in the bright sunlight, where I was surprised at how shocking it was to see a row of US flags flying upside down as part of the protest; to Martin Wainwright, recently retired from the Guardian, for driving me to Leeds afterwards, with his wife Penny; and to Martin Schweiger (doctor, Quaker and CAAB member) and his wife Liz for putting us all up for the night. I was also very pleased to meet Carol Anne Grayson, an activist and Facebook friend, who I had never met in person before, who took the opportunity to film me, for an ongoing project. See here for Martin Wainwright’s profile of Carol last year.

I’ll be posting some photos of the event soon, but in the meantime I hope you have the time to listen to my talk, and to share it with others who might appreciate it.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Radio: On Day 150 of the Hunger Strike at Guantánamo, Andy Worthington Talks to Michael Slate

Yesterday, I was delighted to speak to Michael Slate on his show on KPFK in Los Angeles, as the monstrosity that is Guantánamo reached another horrible milestone — Day 150 of the prison-wide hunger strike that began in early February. Michael and I have spoken many times before (most recently here and here), and our 20-minute interview is here, at the start of the hour-long show.

According to the authorities, 106 of the remaining 166 prisoners are taking part in the hunger strike (the prisoners claim the true total is around 120). Moreover, 45 of these men are being force-fed, a horrible process whereby they are strapped down into restraint chairs twice a day, and have liquid nutrient pumped into their stomachs through tubes inserted up their noses.

For recent discussions of this process by two of the men being force-fed — who, shockingly, are amongst the 86 men cleared for release who are still held — see “Guantánamo Hunger Strike: Nabil Hadjarab Tells Court, ‘I Will Consider Eating When I See People Leaving This Place‘” and “In Court Submission, Hunger Striker Ahmed Belbacha Tells Obama, ‘End the Nightmare that is Guantánamo.’”

This is how Michael described the show:

Friday July 5 is Day 150 of a prison-wide hunger strike at Guantánamo, the prison and torture camp the Bush and Obama administrations have operated since 2002. Over half of the 166 prisoners have already been cleared for release, and only a small number of the rest are actually facing charges. The heroic actions of the prisoners, which continue, have focused international attention on the horrendous and illegal conditions they face. On May 23, Barack Obama gave a major speech in which he again talked about releasing prisoners and closing Guantánamo. Yet nothing has happened.

Andy Worthington, of CloseGuantánamo.org, and author of The Guantánamo Files, talks about the hunger strike, and the continuing struggle in support of the prisoners.

The show also featured the director and actors from a play in L.A. about imperialism in Africa, and Larry Everest, who I have had the pleasure to meet on visits to the West Coast. Larry is a writer for Revolution newspaper, and the author of Oil, Power and Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Save Lewisham Hospital: The Submission to the Judicial Review by Dr. Helen Tattersfield, Chair of the CCG

Today is the 65th anniversary of the NHS, and I’d like to raise a toast to the visionary founders of the health service, who established a system of medical care for all of us, free at the point of entry and paid for out of general taxation, that has demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate, what a universal insurance system should look like.

The lives of my wife and my son were, without a doubt, saved by doctors and nurses in the NHS, and I am also grateful for those who saved me from a serious illness a few years ago. The medical emergencies we faced could have happened to anyone, rich or poor, but for 65 years the NHS has guaranteed that, regardless of how rich or poor you are, all will be treated equally.

The country that created the NHS, and that recognises its value, is the country I want to carry on living in, but it was hijacked 34 years ago by Margaret Thatcher, who was interested in private profit rather than the common good, and governments ever since have continued to behave as though all that counts is the profit of the few at the expense of the many — Tony Blair and New Labour being a particular disappointment.

For sheer destructive will, however, the Tory-led coalition government that has been laying waste to the country since May 2010 has taken the privatising zeal of Thatcherism and New Labour to hitherto unimagined depths. These butchers — mostly privately educated millionaires with a cesspit of mental health problems and a colossal grudge against the world — are determined to try and destroy the public ownership of almost every aspect of life in Britain, with one exception, ironically, being their own salaries.

The 65th anniversary of the founding of the NHS comes the day after two judicial reviews came to an end in the High Court, where, for three days, a judge heard lawyers for the government try to defend the unjustifiable decision, by senior NHS managers and the health secretary Jeremy Hunt, to savagely downgrade services at Lewisham Hospital in south east London. Lewisham is my local hospital, and the plans to downgrade it would be devastating for the people of the borough, which has population of 270,000 people.

Using legislation for dealing with bankrupt NHS trusts, the government last summer appointed a Special Administrator within the NHS, Matthew Kershaw, to deal with the severely indebted South London Healthcare Trust, in the neighbouring boroughs of Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley, and, taking the advice of the medical directors for south east London and London in general, he decided, in his plans announced last October, to sacrifice Lewisham as part of the solution. A proposed merger with one of the SLHT’s hospitals, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich, built through a criminally outrageous PFI deal under New Labour, is supposed to lead to Lewisham having its A&E Department shut, which will have a knock-on effect on a range of other acute services, including children’s A&E (which will also close) and maternity services, so that 90 percent of the mothers in Lewisham will have to try and find spare beds in hospitals in other boroughs, none of which have any spare capacity.

The judicial reviews — one submitted by the wonderfully committed Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, and the other submitted by Lewisham Council — challenged the legality of the Special Administrator’s decisions, and of the health secretary Jeremy Hunt for accepting them at the end of January, just after 25,000 Lewisham residents had marched in support of the hospital (see my photos here and here).

While we await a decision from the High Court — and to mark the 65th anniversary of the NHS — I’m posting below a compelling and forensically detailed analysis of the problems with the plans of the senior management of the NHS and the government when it comes to Lewisham, which, it should be noted, has a resonance that reaches far beyond south east London.

The analysis was written by Dr. Helen Tattersfield, a GP in Downham, in the London Borough of Lewisham, who is the Chair of Lewisham’s Clinical Commissioning Group. The CCGs — made up of groups of GPs — took over 80 percent of the NHS commissioning budget on April 1, and although the government’s obvious intention in setting up the CCGs was to allow unprincipled GPs to set up private businesses and then commission themselves, in the most gob-smacking conflict of interest imaginable, the plan will backfire if enough CCGs — like Lewisham’s — continue to believe in the NHS, rather than in a costly skeleton picked apart by vultures.

Below is Dr. Tattersfield’s submission to the judicial review, which I hope you have time to read in its entirety, as she spells out not only how the CCG and all the relevant bodies in Lewisham are opposed to the Special Administrator’s plans, but also how those plans and Hunt’s acceptance of them are completely at odds with the CCG’s powers and responsibilities as set out by the government of which Hunt is a part! It is worth noting that she establishes that the government handed over the power to make all key decisions about the local provision of health services to the CCGs on April 1 this year, which, of course, not only enables the Lewisham CCG to refuse to implement the plans relating to Lewisham Hospital, but also provides an example for CCGs throughout London and throughout the country to follow. Campaigners take note — and start sounding out your CCGs, and putting relentless pressure on them if they turn out to be corrupt.

Submission to the Judicial Review by Dr. Helen Tattersfield, Chair of the Lewisham Clinical Commissioning Group

1. I am a doctor and a General Practitioner and have been elected by my fellow General Practitioners in the Lewisham area to be the Chair of the Lewisham Clinical Commissioning Group.

2. The Lewisham Clinical Commissioning Group (“the CCG”) is a membership organisation that is made up of the 44 GP practices across Lewisham. We are responsible for planning and buying NHS services across the borough, and work with other clinicians and healthcare providers and the local authority to ensure that local people get the most accessible and effective healthcare services possible.

3. Our responsibilities include commissioning the following types of NHS care for our patients and the residents of Lewisham who are not on the lists of a GP practice:

Elective hospital care
Rehabilitation care
Urgent and emergency care
Most community health services
Mental health and learning disability services

4. The Clinical Commissioning Group does not commission primary care services, which includes GPs, pharmacists, dentists and opticians. These are commissioned by NHS England. Lewisham CCG is overseen by the National Health Service Commissioning Board which is now known as NHS England. NHS England ensures the CCG has the capacity and capability to commission services successfully and to meet our financial responsibilities.

5. Along with commissioning services, we are also responsible for monitoring how well NHS services are provided to local people. We can do this much better if we hear and understand what people think of their health services and we therefore take great concerns to understand the views of local patients and the public.

6. I would like to make it clear that the CCG completely opposes the proposals that the Trust Special Administrator (“TSA”) made concerning the services that the CCG should commission from Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust for the people of Lewisham. Prior to 1 April 2013 the individuals who now formed the Board of the CCG were substantially represented on a shadow CCG which functioned as a committee of Lewisham Primary Care Trust. We were therefore the effective commissioners for NHS care for the people of Lewisham in January 2013. We opposed the plans that the TSA put forward in October 2012 and opposed the proposals put forward in his final report to the Secretary of State in January 2013.

7. Although these decisions were taken in January 2013 by the Secretary of State, in practice they were never intended to be implemented before the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was fully implemented in April 2013.

8. In January 2013 the Secretary of State had statutory duties under section 3 of the National Health Service Act 2012 to “provide” hospital accommodation, medical, dental and ophthalmic services and such other services or facilities for the prevention of illness, the care of persons suffering from illness and the after-care of persons who have suffered from illness as he considered was appropriate as part of the health service. Accordingly, at this time, the Secretary of State had a direct duty to ensure that a range of healthcare services was provided to people in England, including those living in Lewisham.

9. In practice this duty to “provide” healthcare services was delegated to primary care trusts, including the Lewisham PCT. It is not appropriate for me to comment on whether the Secretary of State retained any theoretical powers to enter into contracts for the provision of health care for people in Lewisham other than by way of the PCT, but I can confirm that in practice all relevant healthcare at University Hospital Lewisham was commissioned by Lewisham PCT and not by the Secretary of State directly.

10. I understand that the situation changed substantially on 1 April 2013 when the provisions of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 were fully brought into force. The effect of the changes was that the legal duty to “provide” healthcare services for the people of Lewisham now lies exclusively with the CCG. Parliament has decided to remove the duty on the Secretary of State to be responsible for providing healthcare services to the people of Lewisham (and throughout the country). This means, as I understand matters, that the only statutory body that has responsibility for providing healthcare services for the people of Lewisham under the amended section 3 of the National Health Service Act 2006 is the CCG.

11. I make this point because I and my colleagues volunteered to serve as members of the CCG and take on the responsibilities of local commissioning on the understanding that the CCG, and the CCG alone, would have statutory responsibility for determining what healthcare services should be commissioned for the people for whom we have responsibility.

12. The CCG has a series of legal duties including our duty to exercise functions with a view to securing continuous improvement in the quality of services provided to patients and a duty to have regard to the need to reduce inequalities between patients. Lewisham is an area of considerable social deprivation and with very substantial health needs. It is our judgement that it is vitally important to retain a full range of services at University Hospital Lewisham in order to ensure that the services are available to be accessed by local people. We do not consider that a significant number of local people who have high levels of social deprivation will find it acceptable or possible to travel to access hospital services outside the borough. I appreciate that this may seem difficult to accept but it is an accepted fact to those of us who have worked for many years in areas of high social deprivation.

13. Each year the CCG needs to set out a plan to explain how it proposes to exercise its functions to commission NHS services to local people. We need to consult local people about this plan and then expect NHS England to conduct a performance assessment of the CCG.

14. However, it is an important feature of the new landscape of the NHS that the powers that the Secretary of State formally had to issue Directions under section 8 of the National Health Service 2006 to primary care trusts does not apply to clinical commissioning groups. I understand that the policy behind this change is that local commissioning of NHS services is to be exclusively determined by the local clinical commissioning groups and that the attitude of “Whitehall knows best” under which decisions about local NHS services were made by the Department of Health should come to an end.

15. There are, of course, mechanisms under which decisions can ultimately be referred up to the Secretary of State if there is local disagreement between commissioners and the local authority. However in this case there is no material disagreement between the CCG and Lewisham Council. We are united in our opposition to the plans put forward by the TSA and endorsed by the Secretary of State in his decision of 29 January 2013.

16. Although these decisions were purportedly made by the Secretary of State in January 2013, in practice they can only be carried forward if the CCG agrees to modify its commissioning contracts with a variety of NHS providers. It is a paradox of the present situation that the plans that the Secretary of State wishes to have implemented can only be carried forward if the CCG agrees to change the terms of its commissioning contracts with, amongst others, Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust, King’s College NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. I accept that the Secretary of State presently has the theoretical right to issue a Direction under section 8 to direct the Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust as to which services it should provide at University Hospital Lewisham. However, I would suggest that this is only a theoretical right because:

a. Parliament has passed amendments to section 8 which, once implemented, will remove the right for the Secretary of State to issue Directions to an NHS Trust;
b. It is entirely possible that, before these decisions are implemented, Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust will become an NHS Foundation Trust and accordingly the Secretary of State would lose the right to tell the Board of the Trust which services to provide at its hospitals; and
c. In any event the scheme that the Secretary of State proposes will only work to the benefit of patients if the CCG agrees to commission additional services from amongst others King’s College NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and those Foundation Trusts agreed to provide those services.

17. At present the CCG has made no decision to commission additional services from amongst others King’s College NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and it remains entirely unclear whether, even if we wish to do so, these Foundation Trusts would be prepared to make the additional capital investment and employ the additional staff in order to deliver the additional services anticipated in the decision made by the Secretary of State.

18. Unless and until both the CCG and from amongst others King’s College NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust voluntarily agrees to commission and provide NHS services in accordance with the plans drawn up by the TSA, there are no legal mechanisms of which I am aware to require the independent NHS bodies which have been given statutory responsibilities to follow the plans drawn up by the TSA and endorsed by the Secretary of State.

19. I would therefore suggest that it is completely misconceived for the TSA to think that he had a mandate to carry out a major reconfiguration of NHS acute services across South East London. The proper position, as I understand it from my perspective as the Chair of a CCG, is that after 1 April 2013 the statutory responsibility for determining which NHS services should be commissioned for the people of Lewisham lies exclusively with the CCG. I would therefore like to make it entirely clear that we disagree with the plans of the TSA because it is our assessment that, if we were to follow the plans set out by the TSA, we would be acting in breach of our statutory duties to commission of care services effectively and efficiently and economically.

20. We do not believe that the configurations of services proposed by the TSA will deliver effective, efficient and economic services for the people of Lewisham and do not wish to see them implemented. The government has taken the decision to require the CCG is to take these decisions locally. I am therefore asking the Secretary of State to accept that he should respect the views of the CCG in not wishing to take forward these reconfiguration plans.

21. It is not for me to judge whether it was lawful for the Secretary of State to take the decision in the first place. However, I would respectfully suggest that responsibility for implementing these decisions has now passed to the CCG, and rests exclusively with the CCG, and that it is our decision whether to implement them.

22. The CCG is the lead Commissioner for the NHS services provided by Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust. Unless a Direction is issued by the Secretary of State seeking to enforce his decision on the Trust (which may only have temporary effect for the reasons set out above), the CCG will continue to commission services from the Trust.

23. I would also ask the Secretary of State to reconsider his position in the light of the intolerable pressures on Accident & Emergency services at hospitals throughout the NHS. England has a rapidly ageing population and the number of elderly, frail and vulnerable patients is substantially increasing each year. Up and down the country the NHS is recognising that it has insufficient capacity in its Accident & Emergency services to be able to provide proper support for the existing number of people who attend A & E Departments. This is particularly difficult in areas of high deprivation such as Lewisham. Regardless of how the position may have looked in January 2013, given the present pressures on A & E Departments, it is frankly madness to be considering scaling back a highly successful A & E Department such as the one operating at University Hospital Lewisham.

24. The TSA may have produced theoretical models which show to his satisfaction how patient flows can be managed under the configurations that he proposes. As local clinicians and commissioners I must say loudly and clearly, as we did during the TSA process, that we do not agree. We do not accept that there will be sufficient A & E capacity in the new model of care proposed by the TSA, and consider that it will be a disaster for the NHS patients for whom we have responsibility.

25. It may well have been the case that the Secretary of State thought he had responsibility to make these decisions in January 2013. Our view is that this responsibility has now passed to the CCG and we do not accept the analysis put forward by the TSA.

26. That does not mean, of course, that the CCG does not accept that there is a need for change in local NHS services. Change is happening all the time and managing change is a key part of the statutory responsibilities of the CCG.  However, we consider it is important that these changes are managed locally, after local consultation and with local decision-making. In my view, in practical terms, that is the only way in which change can be successfully implemented in the NHS.  It also appears to be the policy of the Government that these decisions should be taken locally and I would therefore ask the Government to stick to its own policy and accept that responsibility for local decisions has passed to the CCG, and that the CCG’s decisions on these matters should be respected by the Government. There is, after all, little point in Parliament providing that statutory responsibility for commissioning local services should rest exclusively with the CCG and not with the Secretary of State if, at the same time, the Secretary of State wishes to make decisions about local services at entirely viable hospitals such as University Hospital Lewisham.

27. I’ve also been informed that, within the evidence filed in support of the decisions taken by the Secretary of State, it is being suggested that “Lewisham CCG did not propose any viable alternative to the TSA’s recommendations.”

28. In my view this suggestion is misleading. Lewisham CCG consistently, both in the formal TSA meetings and in meetings with Mr. Kershaw, put forward a strong view that there were alternative solutions to the proposals he was putting forward.   We consistently explained to Mr. Kershaw that once decisions had been made about which hospitals previously operated by SLHT were to be passed to which local NHS provider, local solutions concerning acute care could be developed. We were mindful of the financial pressures but were equally aware that, with the current configurations of services, a merged hospital Trust running University Hospital Lewisham and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich was projected to operate at a surplus once the 2 hospitals came under a single Trust. We were therefore confident that proper planning could be carried out locally to develop proposals  which could both save the required expenditure and maintain an appropriate health provision for local residents in Lewisham. We also stated that this would be more likely to produce a sustainable outcome as it would maintain confidence in the local trust and was more likely to be supported by local residents. In the TSA model we believe that the bulk of Lewisham residents will choose not the new Lewisham/Woolwich trust but central London hospitals putting unmanageable pressure on these hospitals and leaving Queen Elizabeth still in financial difficulty.

29. It is also a consistent statement of the TSA that his decisions were supported by the clinical advisory group. What he does not mention is that many of the decisions were agreed with qualifications which were later lost, and that dissenting views were neither acknowledged nor alternate scenarios modelled. Alternate views were either dismissed without discussion or passed over with the comment that there was not time to look into any alternatives.

30. It is disappointing that all of our suggestions appeared to be dismissed by the TSA as unreasonable because we were not prepared to start from a working assumption that the number of major hospitals providing emergency services within South East London should be reduced from 5 to 4. We were not saying that we necessarily ruled out such an option but were not prepared to start with that proposition as a “given” particularly as it was made on a financial rather than clinical needs basis. It does seem to me slightly ironic that the decision of the Secretary of State has effectively rejected the central tenet of Mr. Kershaw’s analysis that emergency services should be reduced to only 4 hospitals. The changes made by the Secretary of State, entirely without any consultation, are supposed to have resulted in the position where 75% of emergency patients at Lewisham will continue to be provided with emergency services at this hospital.  Those changes undermine the fundamental plan that Mr. Kershaw asserted was non-negotiable, and therefore entirely justify our position that other solutions ought to be investigated before the decision was taken to remove emergency services from University Hospital Lewisham.

31. A constant theme of the TSA was that the speed of the task meant there was no time to develop alternative plans or models than those being put forward by them.  We were told there was only one solution, there must be one “local” hospital and that had to be Lewisham, meaning that all effective emergency services had to be removed from Lewisham.

32. Furthermore, the TSA made it impossible for us to develop proper alternative proposals. The detailed financial information which lay behind the TSA decision was never shared with us and to my knowledge was not made known to the CCG Director of Finance. It was not possible therefore for us to work up a full and proper alternative plan or properly challenge what was being proposed.

33. If we were given the necessary information and sufficient time, it would still be possible and indeed desirable to model alternative proposals to those recommended by the TSA and then determined by the Secretary of State.

34. I believe the local NHS commissioners and providers could work together to develop proposals which would ensure a much better and more efficient health economy in South East London, including in Lewisham, and would be far more sustainable than those decided by the Secretary of State. They would also be likely to attract far more local public and patient support. I cannot stress too strongly how having a hugely unpopular reconfiguration imposed on local people makes the job of the CCG nigh on impossible. Unlike the Secretary of State, we have duties to work on a daily basis with local people. We have a statutory duty to listen to them and work with them to improve their health services. However, these decisions have meant that there is almost universal public and professional opposition to the changes proposed to the health services in the Lewisham area.

35. In contrast, if these decisions are set aside and decisions are made locally, we can develop a properly functioning hospital, trusted by local residents, serving more patients who want to access and use local services. This is far preferable to attempting to persuade people to travel to the overloaded central foundation trusts.  This would have been a far better outcome for our very deprived population.

36. I therefore hope that, even at this late stage, the Secretary of State will see the complete folly of the plans he has approved and will accept that these are decisions which ought to be taken locally.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Justice Department Tells Court that Force-Feeding Guantánamo Hunger Strikers is “Maintaining the Status Quo”

What a disgrace the Justice Department lawyers dealing with Guantánamo are. On Wednesday, Andrew Warden, Timothy Walthall and Daniel Barish of the Civil Division’s Federal Programs Branch argued in federal court in Washington D.C. against a motion submitted on behalf of four of the prisoners involved in the prison-wide hunger strike that is nearing its sixth month, asking Judge Rosemary Collyer to order the government to stop force-feeding prisoners engaged in the hunger strike, and also to stop administering medication without the prisoners’ consent.

45 of the prisoners are currently being force-fed, and according to the government 106 of the remaining 166 prisoners are on a hunger strike. The prisoners themselves claim that around 120 of them are refusing food. Two of the four men represented in the motion are being force-fed — Ahmed Belbacha and Nabil Hadjarab, both Algerians — while the other two are taking part in the hunger strike but are not being force-fed. They are Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian.

All four were cleared for release from the prison in January 2010, by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established when he took office, and all but Abu Wa’el Dhiab were also cleared for release under President Bush. 86 men in total were cleared for release by Obama’s task force, but are still held.

As Cori Crider, the Strategic Director of the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, and Jon  B. Eisenberg, an attorney in Oakland, California, stated in their submission, the continued detention of these men “is solely the function of a political stalemate between the President and the Congress.” They added that their clients “did not come lightly to the request they make in this application,” but “after 11 years of limbo at Guantánamo Bay, they have sensibly concluded that they will never be charged and will never be released.”

The lawyers also wrote, “Given the harm that indefinite detention is known to cause its victims, and given its violation of international human rights law and the Anglo-American legal tradition, force-feeding to prolong such detention cannot serve any penological interest.”

As they also noted, in words that should ring around America just hours after the end of the Day of Independence that is supposed to celebrate the end of executive tyranny 237 years ago, “Indefinite detention is un-American.”

In response, however, the Justice Department urged Judge Collyer to reject the prisoners’ request for an injunction, claiming that the public interest “lies with maintaining the status quo,” and “in preserving the health and safety of persons held in government custody, for whose welfare the public has assumed responsibility, and in avoiding the threat to good order, and to the safety of detainees and military personnel alike, should hunger-striking detainees be allowed to perish.”

The government’s lawyers claimed that US personnel in Guantánamo “make every effort to accommodate the religious and cultural practice of detainees,” and that those in positions of responsibility will “modify the hours of meal delivery, including enteral feeding, in accordance with the Ramadan fasting hours,” — a reference to the start of the Muslim holy month, which begins on July 8, when Muslims do not eat in daylight hours.

In their motion, the lawyers for the prisoners had argued that a clear alternative to force-feeding exists — and is one that the authorities should implement immediately. They urged the authorities to “promptly bring them to trial or military commission proceedings, the absence of which is the reason why they are hunger striking.” They also stated, “There cannot be a legitimate penological interest in force-feeding petitioners to prolong their indefinite detention. It facilitates the violation of a fundamental human right. The very notion of it is grotesque.”

In their response to Reprieve and Jon Eisenberg, the Justice Department lawyers also refuted claims that the prisoners are being subjected to medication without their consent, including Reglan, which, as Reprieve put it, “can cause severe neurological disorders, including one that mimics Parkinson’s disease,” if used for extended periods of time. However, no one connected with Guantánamo has ever accepted responsibility for the medical abuse of prisoners that has been thoroughly documented over many years, in particular by Jeff Kaye and Jason Leopold.

In response to the government’s arguments, Reprieve noted that, although the Justice Department lawyers stated that the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo “plans” to feed all prisoners, including those being force-fed, before dawn and after sunset, “absent any … operational issues,” they “fail to make any clear commitment in their response,” to guarantee “that there will be no force-feeding during daylight hours.”

The lawyers for the prisoners also pointed out that the Justice Department made a point of claiming that their clients, as Reprieve put it, “are not ‘persons’ under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and therefore not protected by it.”

They also noted an important revelation in the Justice Department’s arguments — “that a key reason to maintain force-feeding is to preserve ‘discipline within the detention facility,’” which I believe may be considered more significant than keeping the men alive.

In response to the government’s submission, Cori Crider said, “These are more weasel words from the Obama administration — they say they have ‘no plans’ to force-feed during the day in Ramadan, but give no guarantees. Meanwhile, on the eve of America’s Independence Day, they ride rough-shod over the fundamental right of people to choose what goes into their bodies.”

Jon Eisenberg added, “The Obama administration argues here that ‘the public interest lies with maintaining the status quo.’ The status quo is that these men are being held indefinitely without any sort of trial, even though they were cleared for release years ago. Force-feeding to maintain that sort of ‘status quo,’ which is a clear violation of human rights, is barbaric. Consider the irony of the Obama administration arguing here that the Guantánamo Bay detainees are not ‘persons’ within the scope of US law guaranteeing religious freedom, in a post-Citizens United world where even corporations are endowed with legal personhood.”

POSTSCRIPT July 5, 3.30pm GMT: The prisoners’ lawyers have submitted a response to the Justice Department’s claims, and the following was made available by Reprieve:

Guantánamo lawyers warn of “force-feeding factory” in Ramadan

Reprieve, July 5, 2013

Lawyers for four Guantánamo detainees have criticised the Obama administration’s “equivocal” response over whether daytime force-feeding will take place during Ramadan, and warned that the prison may become “a veritable force-feeding factory” during the religious period.

In a reply filed today to the Government’s response to court proceedings brought by the four men, Guantánamo counsel Cori Crider, of human rights charity Reprieve, and Jon B. Eisenberg propose that the US Government should consent to a court-enforceable decree to ensure that detainees’ religious rights are not violated.

They argue that this is necessary as Government lawyers have remained “silent … as to how they might implement nighttime-only force-feeding,” and as, given the high number currently being force-fed, “nighttime-only force-feeding seems problematic at best and possibly even dangerous to petitioners’ health.”

US authorities have claimed that they intend to only force-feed during the night, in order to avoid breaking the daytime fast which is the central feature of Ramadan. However, Lt. Col Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman, told CNN this week that doing so “is an accommodation, not a right.”

Crider and Eisenberg add that, based on Guantánamo authorities’ own numbers, there will be “just 10 hours and 44 minutes [between sunset and sunrise] for respondents to implement two force-feedings of 45 detainees for up to an hour of feeding time and four hours of total observation time per detainee” which “could require dozens of restraint chairs and hundreds of staff.”

They warn that “if this can even be achieved, Guantánamo Bay will become a veritable force-feeding factory” and therefore propose “that respondents agree to a consent decree, enforceable by this Court, which will have the legal effect of securing the detainees’ rights to observe the Ramadan fast and to refuse the administration of [anti-nausea drug] Reglan.”

The attorneys for the four detainees – Shaker Aamer, Nabil Hadjarab, Ahmed Belbacha and Abu Wa’el Dhiab – also take issue with the Government lawyers’ claim that “the public interest lies with maintaining the status quo,” pointing to President Obama’s recent description of Guantánamo as “a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law.”

“We submit,” say Crider and Eisenberg, “that America’s public interest lies not in force-feeding the petitioners to prolong their indefinite detention, but in either trial or release as ‘ready alternatives’ to force-feeding.” They note that the US Government “insist[s] that petitioners’ force-feeding is necessary to prevent them from ‘lay[ing] waste to their bodies,’” and in response state that “Petitioners’ indefinite detention, however, is laying waste to their souls.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Save Lewisham Hospital: Hopes that the Judicial Reviews Will Find Downgrade Plans Unlawful

On Tuesday, a High Court judge, Sir Stephen Silber, began hearing two judicial reviews intended to prove that plans to severely downgrade services at Lewisham Hospital in south east London — conceived and approved by senior NHS management and the Tory-led government — are unlawful.

The judicial reviews, submitted by the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, and Lewisham Council, which I discussed in detail here, follow a roller-coaster eight months since it was announced at the end of October 2012 that, as part of legislation dealing with bankrupt NHS trusts, an NHS Special Administrator, Matthew Kershaw — appointed in the summer to deal with the indebted South London Healthcare Trust, in the boroughs of Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley — recommended that Lewisham, which is not in debt, and is unconnected to the SLHT, should merge with one of the SLHT’s three hospitals, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich, and have its A&E Department closed down, which currently receives 110,000 patients a year.

This is a drastic move that would then lead to the closure of all acute services, including the majority (90 percent) of all births in Lewisham, where 4,400 births currently take place every year, as well as Lewisham’s well-regarded children’s A&E, and other important frontline services.

With 270,000 inhabitants, and a growing population, the decision to force Lewisham’s residents to go elsewhere in an emergency is nothing short of madness. Getting to the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich involves a journey that, very literally, can take two hours by public transport at busy times, to a hospital that is already struggling with A&E waiting times, and the other options involve King’s in Camberwell or St. Thomas’s in Lambeth, neither or which has spare capacity.

In terms of Woolwich, the most shocking statistic immediately seized upon by campaigners in Lewisham was the fact that one A&E would now be meant to serve the needs not just of the people of the boroughs of Greenwich (where Woolwich is located) and Lewisham, but Bexley as well, after the hospital there had its A&E Department closed a few years ago, thereby consigning 750,000 people to just one A&E Department.

A powerful grass-roots movement sprang up to oppose the plans, with 15,000 people attending a march and rally in November, and 25,000 in January (see my photos here, here and here), but the health secretary Jeremy Hunt, though shaken, refused to back down — hence the judicial reviews.

A big crowd was outside the High Court on Tuesday, showing their support for the hospital with a colourful campaign on the pavement outside the Royal Courts of Justice, and also by filling the courtroom where the judicial reviews were taking place.

The judicial reviews began just three days after an extraordinary event took place in Lewisham — a day-long People’s Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Michael Mansfield QC, at which medical professionals and members of the public provided the most compelling arguments for turning down the Special Administrator’s proposals, and Jeremy Hunt’s acceptance of them, for saving Lewisham Hospital,  and, more generally, for saving the NHS from the existential crisis it is currently facing.

25 witnesses spoke at the Commission – patients, patient group representatives, GPs, hospital consultants and nurses, as well as Lord David Owen and Lewisham Mayor Sir Steve Bullock — and, in a press release, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign described it as “a chance for those who felt that their evidence had been ignored by the Trust Special Administrator Matthew Kershaw and by the Secretary of State, who they believe, accepted Mr. Kershaw’s proposals for Lewisham almost in their entirety.”

For myself, the campaign has demonstrated the necessity of demanding comprehensive emergency services for every borough in London, and for every comparable population centre elsewhere. Lewisham, for example, has the same population as Brighton, Hull or Newcastle, which also need their own fully-functioning hospitals, and although the NHS is to be commended, in London, for having created four Major Trauma Centres (including King’s) and eight specialist heart hospitals (including St. Thomas’s), it is insane to savagely downgrade all emergency services in large population areas — as is planned not just in Lewisham, to reduce the A&E Departments in south east London from five to four, but also in north west London, where plans have been approved to close four out of nine A&E Departments, as well as elsewhere in London and across the country, because people will die, waiting times will increase and standards will fall.

If a transparent audit demonstrated that more money was needed for the NHS, the British public would oblige, but at present we have political ideology pushing for privatisation, and senior NHS management (the medical directors) fooling themselves — or appearing to fool themselves — that the savage cuts proposed are not about money, but about improving clinical services, when that is clearly not the case.

In its press release on the eve of the judicial review, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign summed up what the case is all about:

The Administrator proposed that Lewisham Hospital’s A&E department and all acute admitting wards should close, its adult Intensive Care Unit should close and its maternity service should be downgraded or closed completely.

The legal action at the High Court claims that the decision to downgrade and close services at the hospital was unlawful as the Administrator’s powers, and therefore the Secretary of State’s too, related to South London Healthcare NHS Trust only. They did not extend to the Lewisham Trust.

Save Lewisham Hospital campaign argues that the hospital is a busy, well performing and popular hospital and that the alternatives being put forward by the Secretary of State instead will be extremely difficult for residents to access.

They also point to serious consequences for women who need to access emergency services during labour. Under the proposals Lewisham Hospital would provide a midwife unit but no obstetric unit. Should women require emergency services during labour they would have to be transferred by ambulance, mid-crisis, to another maternity unit, which raises real risks as to their safety and that of their babies.

The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign also referred to a new report, to be published soon, in which Prof. Allyson Pollock, professor of public health research and policy at Queen Mary, University of London, who spoke at the People’s Commission of Inquiry, “claims that the full extent and damaging impact of NHS PFI contracts, with consequent debts leading to widespread cuts and closures, threatens to engulf the South London Healthcare Trust including Lewisham Hospital,” as the press release described it. The SLHT, outrageously, had two hospitals built through PFI deals for £210 million, in a disgraceful deal that will end up costing £2.5 billion.

The press release added that the report “claims that the major closures, redundancies, sell-offs and service reconfigurations imposed on Lewisham Hospital, and more widely across the South London Healthcare NHS Trust by the special administrator appointed by the secretary of state, do not serve patient interests,” whose needs, in Prof. Pollock’s words, “have been, at best, down-played and at worst ignored.”

The report “concludes that Lewisham hospital is a thriving local hospital which serves the needs of its local community,” and that the Special Administrator “made no public health case for downgrading services and provided no sound evidence for the policy.”

Note: For another detailed analysis of what is at stake for Lewisham, and the lies of the government and senior NHS managers, please read this Guardian article by Shannon Hawthorne, a journalist and a member of the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign. And see here for my archive of articles about the campaign.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

In Court Submission, Hunger Striker Ahmed Belbacha Tells Obama, “End the Nightmare that is Guantánamo”

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us – just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

On Sunday June 30, 2013, attorneys for four prisoners at Guantánamo filed a motion with the District Court in Washington D.C. The motion was submitted in response to the authorities’ force-feeding and forced medication of hunger strikers engaged in a prison-wide hunger strike that began in February 6, and that involves 106 of the remaining 166 prisoners according to the authorities, and at least 120 according to the prisoners. 44 of those men are being force-fed.

The four prisoners are Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, Ahmed Belbacha, and Nabil Hadjarab, both Algerians, and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian, and both the Algerians are currently being force-fed.

All of them are amongst the 86 men (out of 166 prisoners in total) who were cleared for release by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force in January 2010, but are still held. This is partly because of severe restrictions imposed by Congress, but President Obama promised to overcome these restrictions and to resume releasing prisoners in a major speech on national security issues on May 23, although not a single prisoner has been released since that promise was delivered.

The motion was submitted by the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, and Jon  B. Eisenberg, an attorney in Oakland, California, and as Reprieve explained in a press release, the lawyers asked the court to issue a ruling to compel the government to “stop force-feeding in the prison and stop force-medicating prisoners, particularly with Reglan, a drug used by the US during the force-feeding process that when used for extended periods of time can cause severe neurological disorders, including one that mimics Parkinson’s disease.”

In a separate submission, Cori Crider, Reprieve’s Strategic Director, gave detailed accounts of her recent conversations with Ahmed Belbacha, Nabil Hadjarab and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, and I’m posting below the powerful declaration by Ahmed Belbacha, whose story we have covered here before, with mention of his fears of returning to Algeria, his two-year residency in the UK, and the offers to house him that have been made by individuals and communities in the UK and in the US. His Reprieve page is here.

Ahmed’s very obvious decency is readily apparent from his account, as is the reality of the situation in Guantánamo — not only of the body searches, reported in May, which have deterred many of the prisoners from speaking on the phone with their attorneys, but also about how some medical personnel have sadistic tendencies, and others are out of their depth and shocked at what they have been asked to do. His testimony also reveals a clear and unacceptable chain of command, in which the medical personnel are obliged to follow orders issued by the guards.

On Monday July 1, Judge Rosemary Collyer ordered the government to respond to the motion by midnight on Wednesday, as America’s Day of Independence from the tyranny of British rule begins — and questions must be asked about what happened to the laws and rights that were supposed to make this new nation proud to have overthrown tyranny and executive overreach.

Ahmed Belbacha’s declaration from Guantánamo

Submitted by Cori Crider

I last spoke to Mr. Belhacha on May 30, 2013. We spent some time going through his draft declaration but were unable to finish in the time available. He instructed that I should proceed with what he told me in my name.

He indicated the degrading searches persist. I paraphrase his statements below: “They are still searching us in the same way, yes. I was searched twice just now, to come talk to you — going back, I don’t know what will happen, but probably the same.” (At this point I sensed he was uncomfortable discussing this issue and moved on.)

He also instructed me to convey the following about his participation in this motion.

Instruction to counsel

“I am participating in this hunger strike of my own free choice and am fully aware of the negative consequences which a long-term strike could have on my health. I accept these risks because hunger striking is the sole peaceful means that I have to protest my indefinite detention.

“I realize the consequences of ending the force feeding regime. Understanding this, I ask the Court to stop the prison authorities from force feeding and forcibly medicating me.

Reasons for striking

“I have been held in Guantánamo without charge or trial since March 2002. In February 2007 I was cleared for release by the military’s Administrative Review Boards established under President Bush. I was cleared again in 2009 by a multi-agency task force set up by President Obama, which my lawyer tells me included representatives of the US Department of Justice, State, Defense and the FBI, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security.

“I have informed my lawyers and the medical staff at Guantánamo that I will remain on hunger strike until the authorities stop desecrating the Qur’an and end our imprisonment. We should not be here.

“I am also striking to protest the restrictions that Congress has put in place that are preventing people to be transferred. I want restrictions removed and people to be set free and then I will stop my hunger strike.

“A doctor tried to convince me to break the hunger strike. I told her I would strike until either the guards stopped insulting our Qur’ans, or they took our Qur’ans from us so that they would be safe from the guards’ abuse. I also said that the President must fulfill his promise to end the nightmare that is Guantánamo Bay. The doctor replied that this was none of her business.

The experience of hunger-striking and force-feeding

“I have not decided to do this lightly. Each day of the strike is an ordeal. The process of being force fed hurts a great deal, particularly because I had a prior surgery in my nose so my nerves there are very sensitive. It is both painful and risky for me to be force fed.

“Medical staff also seem to make matters worse, either through inexperience or indifference. Sometimes they botch putting the tube in and tears stream down my cheek. They used to use my left nostril, but it stopped working, I suppose because it swelled. They can’t even get the tube in that way anymore. I asked for a size 8 tube, and they refused, saying, ‘You don’t like size 10? Eat!’ So they use my right nostril instead. Because of the surgery in my nose, they also can’t pass the tube straight down to the throat. I ask them to work it around, and they ask, ‘around what?’ I say ‘more to the left’ and it gets around. Some of the nurses refuse to do this.

“When they force feed us in Camp 6 they shackle our feet with metal chains and shackle our arms and hands to our stomach with metal chains. Then they put us in a force feeding chair and tie us with belts. Sometimes the nurses try to measure my blood pressure and temperature but they cannot because I am shackled. The medical staff is scared because they don’t know how to measure the vitals with all the shackling and cannot complain.

“I have tried to tell the medical staff that force-feeding me is a violation of their medical ethics, but they say that the order comes from the guards and they have no control.

“Some of the newer medical staff they sent down because the strike is so widespread are afraid during feedings, and it shows. I do not think I am intimidating as I weigh at most 120 pounds now; it seems to be because they have never been asked to do anything like this before. When one of the new nurses — she was perhaps 40 — started to feed me, I saw that her hands were shaking. I asked her whether it was her first time ever to force- feed someone. ‘Yes, it is,’ she responded.

“When the food comes in, I feel like throwing up. Some of the prisoners just can’t digest it and they vomit.

“I have thrown up myself sometimes because of the feeding. Especially at bedtime, I feel ill and start to throw up. I try to do it when they will not notice — because if they see me they will put me in the chair and feed me again. That is worse than throwing up. When they feed us, they shut off the water in the cell for one hour afterwards. If they see somebody throwing up within that hour, they repeat the feeding.

“In another incident, a male nurse passed the tube through my nose, and then started to pump the feeder. The food rushed into my stomach too quickly and I started to feel like I wanted to throw up. I asked him to reduce the speed. He not only refused, but tried to turn it up. It was already as high as it could go. I felt this was a terrible way for a supposed ‘health professional’ to behave. After he finished his work, he quickly pulled the tube from my nose and left the room.

Reglan

“I have never heard of Reglan. But I don’t believe they would tell me if they were going to use it on me, or that it had side effects.

“I have tried to ask what goes in the food. In the beginning, they put the medicine with the food and I asked the corpsman: ‘Does the food include medicine?’ He said: ‘It’s been included all along.’ He said it was Vitamin B and a stomach laxative. This apparently goes to all the brothers. They don’t tell me about drugs to stop people throwing up. Sometimes I saw them mix medicine with the food. They will not tell you anything.

“Because Reglan is one of the suggested drugs to ‘to enhance gastric motility’ in hunger strikers in the Guantánamo force-feeding Standard Operating Procedure, this made me concerned Reglan was being administered by force.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.