Gitmo prisoners threatened with degrading body search

Attorneys for the hunger-striking inmates at the notorious US Guantanamo Bay prison say the jail’s officials have threatened their clients with humiliating body searches as a scare tactic to dissuade them from meeting their lawyers.

“Under the new search policy, a detainee who leaves his camp is subject to a search including his private parts and …,” AFP quoted lawyer David Remes as saying on Saturday.

Remes made the remarks after coming back from the military prison to speak with some of his dozen clients kept in there.

Over two thirds of the 166 prisoners still held at the notorious US jail are on a hunger strike, which began on February 6 against prison conditions and the detainees’ indefinite confinement.

Remes added that two of his Yemeni clients on hunger strike, identified as Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahab, and Salman Rabeii, had talked about the new policy. The lawyer was at the US naval prison from April 29 to May 3.

Describing the searches as “shocking,” Remes highlighted that they were “designed to deter many detainees from meeting with their” lawyers and “to make their life more miserable and put the detainees in front of an impossible choice.”

He said that “scare tactic” is meant to break the hunger strike at the prison.

Remes cited Abd al-Wahab as telling him that fellow inmate Mukhtar al-Wrafie, who is another of his clients, decided against meeting him last week because he was afraid he would be subjected to the search.

The US forces recently resorted to force-feeding some of the striking captives via tubes through their nose and into their stomach.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has urged the US President Barack Obama’s administration to mend the situation in Guantanamo that has compelled prisoners to go on hunger strike, saying the act of force-feeding is akin to torture.

Most of the 166 detainees being held at the jail have been cleared for release or have never been charged.