Judge Is Asked to End Hunger Strike

Lawyers who recently visited suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, asked a federal judge Wednesday to help end a protracted hunger strike there, saying several inmates were emaciated and many were determined to starve themselves.

A military spokesman at the island prison said the number of inmates refusing food since Aug. 8 has dropped sharply, from 128 last week to 36. Another 16 were in the prison hospital receiving intravenous fluids or being force-fed through the nose, Sgt. Justin Behrens said. All of them, he said, “are in stable condition.”

Behrens said he could not provide further details on the abrupt decline in participation in the hunger strike. Lawyers for some of the inmates asked the court for an emergency hearing, and the government was to respond today to the request.

“They call it ‘Hunger To Death,’ ” said Thomas B. Wilner, a Washington lawyer who had returned from a visit with some of the 11 Kuwaiti detainees he represents at the prison.

He said three of his clients were severely emaciated, with one unable to stand or sit without help, and another constantly bleeding from his nose where prison doctors have been force-feeding him.

“It’s a very personal thing with them,” Wilner said. “They are resolved.”

The protest was launched to air complaints that only four of the 502 detainees at the prison had been charged with any offenses, and that most of them saw no end in sight to their captivity. They have been held for about four years.

Wilner is asking U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington to issue a temporary restraining order and hold an emergency hearing to find a reasonable end to the protest and make sure that prisoners are given proper nourishment and medical attention.

He and other defense lawyers disputed the military’s claim that the number of protesters had dropped, contending in a lawsuit that the Pentagon had repeatedly “concealed and misrepresented the facts about the hunger strike and the detainees’ medical condition.”

Wilner said three of them were dangerously ill. One of them is Abdullah Al Kandari, who Wilner said had been a “superb athlete and former member of the Kuwait National Volleyball Team” and had tried to keep himself fit in his cramped cell in Cuba.

But now, Wilner said, “he looked terrible. He was pale, bleary-eyed, disoriented, barely audible, and had lost considerable weight.”

Another is Abdulazziz Shammari. The lawyer said six soldiers had to assist him to a chair so Wilner could speak with him. “He could not maintain his balance without the aid of a walker,” the lawyer recalled. “He is skin and bones and looks like one of the victims of starvation in the Sudan.”

He identified the third as Fawzi al Odah. Wilner said that when he met with Al Odah, the prisoner described the pain of being force-fed through his nose, and at one point during their conversation, he suddenly “bled from the nose.” Wilner added, “He has lost nearly 30 pounds ... and weighs only 113.”

Kollar-Kotelly was expected to hold a hearing into the matter Friday or early next week.