Nothing has changed in Guantanamo as detainees are still being subjected to humiliating invasive searches and painful force-feeding with the number of hunger strikers having doubled since December, attorney Clive Stafford Smith told RT.
RT:Your organization’s report suggests the number of hunger-striking detainees has doubled since December. Why is that?
Clive Smith: Well it is only up again because
nothing has changed in Guantanamo. And the prisoners who have
been on hunger strike then suspended it because they hoped
something would happen but of course most of them are still
there.
RT:So what is the current state of play?
How many are on hunger strike at the moment?
CS: There are 33 of them on strike at the
moment. There is a very disturbing addition to what had been
happening. They have changed the protocol in Guantanamo. The
government is keeping secret those protocols, so we only learn
about them from talking to the prisoners.
And probably the most disturbing things about it is that if the
prisoner is from Camp 6, which is the least bad camp, goes on
hunger strike, they automatically get transferred not to just to
Camp 5 but to Camp 5 Echo, which really has been the most abusive
place in all of Guantanamo Bay. Prisoners are held in all steel
cells and are denied the most basic human rights, just as a
punishment for going on strike.
RT:Are they still enforcing the
force-feeding techniques?
CS: The force-feeding techniques are very much
in action. Unfortunately again it is very abusive force-feeding
techniques. Casting aside if it is ethical to force-feed at all,
and the World Medical Association says it’s not, unfortunately
the techniques they are using in Guantanamo are gratuitously
painful.
So for example and I’ve witnessed some of this – they used to
leave the tubes up prisoner’s noses so it did not hurt so much –
they are still pulling those tubes out twice a day and forcing
them up each time. They are still forcing far too much food too
quickly into the prisoner, making prisoner sick. If you are sick,
they just carry on doing it. It really is horrendous what is
happening.
RT:One inmate – Shaker Aamer – tells his
lawyers that invasive searches by prison guards continues. Is
there any way to verify that? And, if true, is there a
supervisory body that can be pressured to do something about it?
CS: There is no question that the invasive
searches are continuing. The authorities themselves have referred
to these as scrutiny searches. Shaker Aamer who is one of my
clients has confirmed this to me and indeed he went to his last
call with me – it is not just for the hunger strike, it is also
for legal calls – he went in his underwear rather than give them
excuse to search him.
But actually, I’ve got several other prisoners who are now having
a very hard time coming even to legal meetings, because it is so
humiliating to go through this search process.
RT:What reasons are authorities giving for
doing that?
CS: Well they actually, officially in a court, gave a
reason that they needed to search the prisoners’ trouser pockets.
Now as Shaker points out, that is very laughable, because the
trousers they wear there don’t have pockets. But it is very clear
what is going on which is an attempt to humiliate the prisoners
such that they realize that they shouldn’t either serve their
legal rights, come to see their lawyers or go on hunger strike.
RT:At the end of the day, these searches,
are they legal?
CS: Well it is a difficult question to say
what’s legal when there’s no law being enforced. Unfortunately,
the US military has argued in what is fairly arrogant, argued to
the courts in United States, that the courts have no supervisory
authority over the military.
Now, we contend differently, we contend that this is obviously a
violation of the law and the courts have the right to forbid it.
Well, the military says whether it is a violation of the law or
not, the courts can’t stop this, we’re going to do what we want.
So really if there is no remedy, how can you say what is a legal
right? Well, there is a legal right, it is just not being
enforced.
RT:With everything you’ve described, what does it
make of President’s Obama promise to shut down the camp?
CS: I think we have to say that Obama has been making
moves in the right direction and these are mainly prompted by the
media coverage of the hunger strike. And I think you have to look
at the courage of some of these prisoners with what they have
gone through that it has actually achieved something. We have
seen for example going back to Algeria, to Sudan, to Saudi
Arabia, and most recently to Slovakia. So it is gradually going
in the right direction, but we still have 155 prisoners and we
still have half prisoners cleared for release, not released.
RT:What's life like for those former
prisoners who were released, what do they go on to do?
CS: Well one of the great problems with
Guantanamo, and indeed Shaker Aamer wrote a piece about this just
the other day, is there is some debate going on where to send the
prisoners but no discussion has been had about how to help the
people who have spent 12 years being tortured and abused in US
custody. We are trying at Reprieve to do something, trying to
help prisoners after they get out, but the US government needs to
step forward and do a whole lot more.
RT:What other problems to they face?
CS: Well, you imagine coming out after those
series of abuses. Just to take one example, we’ve got a doctor
there just before Christmas to see Shaker Aamer and she
identified in Shaker the fact that he is suffering a
post-traumatic stress disorder from what he has been through,
that he is suffering from the psychotic results from being in
secure housing unit by himself. That he is suffering from all
sorts of other problems, all of which can be treated and made
better once he gets out, if only he can get the help. And it is
OK for Shaker if he comes back to Britain. We have a health
service, but that is not true of every country. So we need to get
prisoners out to a place where they can get rehabilitation and
where we can get it to them.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.