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Guantanamo prisoners halt hunger strike

Dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees have abandoned a hunger strike, lowering the number of inmates refusing food to 18, the US military said.

The strike had jumped to 89 participants on Thursday, from three late last month. It was the biggest hunger strike of the year at the US naval base in Cuba, where about 460 men are being held on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

"It appears that right after that peak [of 89] then people started resuming eating again," Navy Commander Robert Durand said on Sunday in a telephone interview from the base.

He said four of the 18 hunger strikers were being force-fed and offered no further details about the 71 detainees' decision to begin eating again.

Durand said the hunger strike technique was "consistent with al-Qaeda practice" and was an attempt to get media attention to bring international pressure on the US to release them so they could return to the "battlefield."

But human rights groups have called the hunger strike an appeal for justice.

"There's a lot of folks down there who are in their fifth year of detention without charge and without any certainty of a future, and that's not an unreasonable explanation," said Jumana Musa, advocacy director for human rights group Amnesty International USA.

A UN panel said on May 19 that holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay violated the world's ban on torture. The panel said the US should close the detention center.

German Chancellor Angela Mer-kel, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith are among those who also recently have called on the US to close the center.

But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Washington cannot turn loose "people who have vowed to kill more Americans if they're released."

Ten Guantanamo detainees have been charged with crimes. The Supreme Court is expected to rule this month whether US President George W. Bush overstepped his authority in ordering the detainees to be tried by US military tribunals.

The hunger strike comes amid increasing displays of defiance from the prisoners, many of whom claim their innocence.

On May 18, a detainee staged a suicide attempt to lure guards into a cellblock where they were attacked by prisoners armed with makeshift weapons, the military said. Earlier that day, two detainees overdosed on antidepressants they collected from other detainees and hoarded in their cells. The men have since recovered.

The hunger strike began in August and peaked at 131 last fall, according to the military's count, before declining to three earlier this year as the military used more aggressive force-feeding methods, including a restraint chair.

Marc Falkoff, an attorney for 17 Yemeni detainees, said he believed that "extreme coercion" had been used in March to force hunger strikers to drop their protest.

"I find it impossible to believe that they would all the sudden en masse decide that they were hungry," said Falkoff, who last visited his clients at the base in April.
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