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Emergency Fast for Tariq Ba Odah and the Hunger Strikers — Fast for Justice

“Freedom should be much more precious for the human being than all the desires on earth. And we should never give it up regardless of how expensive the price may be.” – Tariq Ba Odah, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 2013

Witness Against Torture is calling for an emergency fast to highlight the case of Guantánamo prisoner, Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni man who has been detained at the prison without charge since 2002 and cleared for release in 2009.  According to his attorneys, Tariq, who at 74 pounds—56% of his ideal body weight-- is on the brink of death according to three health officials.    Please consider fasting on Friday, September 18, 2015 in solidarity with Tariq Ba Odah and the remaining 115 Guantánamo prisoners.

If you plan to fast, send an email to witnesstorture@PROTECTED.  Please include in the email where you live and a brief statement as to why you are fasting.  If you cannot fast on Friday, feel free to choose another day this week to fast.  Witness Against Torture will report the numbers of those fasting and convey, through attorneys, your messages to Tariq and others at Guantánamo.

Click here for full information regarding emergency fast:  

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Lawyers: Guantánamo prisoner on hunger strike ‘gravely sick’
Herald staff and wire report

Lawyers for a Guantánamo prisoner on hunger strike are challenging a military doctor’s assertion that prisoner Tariq Ba Odah is clinically stable even though his weight has dropped to 74 pounds.

Ba Odah’s lawyers said in a filing with a federal court in Washington Friday that the prisoner is gravely ill and should be immediately released. Medical experts hired by the Center for Constitutional Rights dispute the military’s claim that the 5-foot-3-inch tall Yemeni in his 30s is getting adequate treatment at the detention center holding 116 captives in Cuba, an undisclosed number of them on hunger strike.

Tariq Ba Odah at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a photo provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents him.
“As three medical experts attest, something dangerous is happening to Mr. Ba Odah that is now likely beyond his control,” the lawyers wrote in the filing that asks U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan to intervene.

Ba Odah has been on hunger strike since 2007 to protest his confinement and is being force-fed to prevent starvation. The United States has said the captive can be released, but not to his native Yemen and he must wait until it places him in another country for resettlement. He has family in Saudi Arabia.

The captive’s lawyers argue that the federal courts have the authority to intervene in the case using an Army regulation governing prisoners of war, something the Obama administration disputes as inapplicable to Guantánamo detainees. The lawyers say the Yemeni needs to receive health care elsewhere because he no longer will cooperate with the prison’s Navy medical team.

“Army Reg. 190-8 and the humanitarian principles it incorporates, are a shield not a sword,” the filing said. “They are meant to protect gravely ill prisoners and ameliorate their suffering, not penalize them for their clinically predicable mistrust in the doctors that are periodically sent to their prison doors.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article34935792.html#storylink=cpy

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Save the Date: Fast for Justice - January 3rd- 13th, 2016