Press Release
Guantanamo Bay: A Stain of Disgrace on the Face of America's Civilization which Time Will Never Erase!
(Translated)

After more than 11 years since the establishment of the worst prison in the modern era, the Guantanamo prison administration are force feeding twenty prisoners from the one hundred on hunger strike. An outcry was sent from Yemeni detainee, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, from the darkness of his prison-cell, in an article leaked by his lawyer and published by The New York Times on Sunday 14 April, titled: "Gitmo Is Killing Me." The loud cry sent from the depths of his prison, saying: "I will not eat until they restore my dignity." In the letter, he described the excruciating pain he felt when eight officers beat him while he was ill lying on a prison-hospital bed. They also thrust feeding tubes into his stomach through his nose. He says, "I will never forget ... I can't describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way." He also says, "I've been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial." Lawyers say the hunger strike came as a protest against the inspection process of the prisoners' belongings and their Qur'an, which they described as a desecration.

As a response to this letter, the World Health Organization described forced-feeding as "an unethical approach". Vincent Lakobino, medical affairs expert in the Human Rights Watch said, "coercively feeding an individual does not only constitute an ethical violation, but could also be considered as torture or ill-treatment".

On April 16, a rights group released a study containing more than 560 pages, denouncing the interrogation practices used at the time of the American President George W. Bush that are still used today. At the time, Laura Peter, the Human Rights Watch advisory director, confirmed that "the evidences regarding the existence of acts of torture are irrefutable." The report concluded that "senior state officials of the highest rankings and top positions bear the primary responsibility for permitting the outbreak of illegal and inappropriate interrogation techniques". The study also concluded that "a lot of information was extracted under the influence of torture and other ill-treatments".

The New York Times published on 7/1/2012 excerpts from the diary of Murat Kurnaz, a former German prisoner, saying: "they dunked my head under water... chained to the ceiling of a building and hung by my hands for days, the pain was unbearable."

The atrocities did not stop at this point, but in 2006, prisoner Salah Ali Al-Silmi returned to his family as a corpse. The U.S. authorities have claimed that he committed suicide, whereas a Swiss medical committee revealed that vital organs were missing from his body. Yemeni prisoner Adnan Farhan Al-Sharabi faced the same fate, he was found dead in his cell on September 8, 2012; suicide was the cause of death, among the six cases of "suicide" there was no verification of any of these allegations.

Earlier, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung published on 19/12/2010 that two U.S. Rights groups accused the U.S. Department of Defense (The Pentagon) "of giving all Guantanamo detainees drugs that have very serious side effects without any medical justification, and turning these detainees into trial subjects for drugs produced by the U.S. Army labs and companies associated with them." And four years after the head of the global evil state Barack Obama pledged to close Guantánamo within a year of taking office, the detention center still holds the title of the absolute worst reputation, revealing the true face of Western civilization.

Let America accomplish what it wishes to accomplish, but it should be aware along with its agents, that the State of evil lasts for only one hour, while the State of Islam lasts until The Hour, and that its ugly actions will only be marked on dark filthy pages that will never be erased from the memory of history, as witness of the decline of its civilization. Let this be an initial support for the determined Muslims so that they roll up their sleeves, and work with the sincere people of this Ummah, among them are the members of Hizb ut Tahrir, to rid humanity of America's injustice and misguidance, and rinse the lands from its filth and impurity, and restore purity to all parts of the world through the justice of Islam and its divine eminence.

(إن الذين فتنوا المؤمنين والمؤمنات ثم لم يتوبوا فلهم عذاب جهنم ولهم عذاب الحريق)

"Those who persecute the Believers, men and women, and do not turn in repentance, will have the Penalty of Hell: They will have the Penalty of the Burning Fire." [85:10]

Osman Bakhach
Director of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir