U.S. sending more medics to Guantanamo as hunger strike grows
Chicage Tribune
By Jane Sutton
April 22, 2013
The U.S. military is sending additional medical personnel to the Guantanamo prison camp, where more than half the captives have joined a hunger strike to protest their open-ended detention, a camp spokesman said on Monday.
Reinforcements numbering fewer than 40 will arrive by the end of April, said Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House, a spokesman for the detention operation at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeastern Cuba.
House said the new arrivals would include a doctor, nurses, corpsmen and medics, who will supplement the 100 medical personnel already on duty. Navy hospital corpsmen and Army medics are trained to provide emergency care and basic medical services.
“There was no specific trigger, other than the growing number of detainees that have chosen to hunger strike,” House said.
The U.S. military counted 84 of the 166 prisoners as hunger strikers on Monday and was force-feeding 16 of them liquid meals through tubes inserted in their noses and down into their stomachs. Six were hospitalized for observation, House said.
Hunger strikes have occurred at Guantanamo since shortly after the United States began detaining suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives there in January 2002.
The current hunger strike began in early February, after guards seized photos and other belongings during a cell search. Prisoners said the guards had also mistreated their Korans during the search, which the U.S. military denies. …
Read on: www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-guantanamobre93l0xt-20130422,0,901445.story
