From MSNBC
More than four years after President Barack Obama signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, little has changed. In spite of the administration’s hand wringing over what to do with the facilities’ 166 prisoners–transferring them to the U.S., returning them to their host nation, or sending them to a third party country–there is something very simple that can be done to meet some of the hunger strikers’ demands.
“It would still probably be a very, very positive move for the administration to say they’re not going to search Qurans,” said attorney David Remes, who represents 17 of the 166 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “That was the original demand.”
A declaration filed in federal court by Obaidullah, a detainee participating in the hunger strike, cites soldiers’ treatment of detainees’ Qurans as the “most disturbing” aspect of the February 6 search. Obaidullah filed the declaration on March 27, but it was not declassified until early May:
“I have not taken any food from the guards since February 6 in protest to events of that week, and what has happened at the camp since then. That week, camp authorities asked all of the detainees in our block in Camp 6 to step outside of the cells while a ‘shake-down’ of the entire block was conducted by U.S. soldiers. While we were all outside of the cell blocks, soldiers went into our cells, and searched what little personal belongings we have. This kind of very intrusive search had not been conducted for at least 4 or 5 years, since the early years at Guantanamo under President Bush. The searches were unexpected, sudden, and disrespectful. To my knowledge there was no incident which provoked the searches…Most disturbing, was the way in which the soldiers disrespected our Qur’ans [sic]. While the soldiers conducted their searches, I and other detainees saw U.S. soldiers rifling through the pages of many Qur’ans [sic] and handling them roughly. This constitutes desecration.”
