WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- At least 105 detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly are on a hunger strike, with 20 of them hospitalized on feeding tubes.
Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer representing several of the detainees, told the New York Times one prisoner told him the strike was largely to protest their long imprisonment without being charged with any crime as well as the conditions of their confinement.
Base spokesman Maj. Jeffrey Weir said that the prisoners who are being fed at the hospital are generally not strapped to their beds and gurneys but are in handcuffs and leg restraints. Weir said the prisoners usually accept the nasal tubes passively because they know they will be restrained and fed forcibly if necessary. He described the process as "assisted feeding" rather than force-feeding.
More than 600 prisoners are in the camp, mostly rounded up as terror suspects in Afghanistan in 2001. The Bush administration has said that while the Guantanamo detainees are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, they are generally treated by its standards.
