Guantanamo: A Hunger Striker's Account

The New York Times today offers a harrowing firsthand account of life as a Gitmo detainee on hunger strike. "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"—all this even though "no one seriously thinks I am a threat," writes Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, who says he was accused of being a guard for Osama bin Laden. He was arrested after fleeing to Pakistan from Afghanistan "like everyone else" after the US invaded, he writes.

He describes being force-fed while tied to a bed last month, denied access to the bathroom, and forced to use a "degrading" catheter. "I had never experienced such pain" as being force-fed through the nose—still a twice-daily occurrence, he writes. "The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen." But "I am a human being, not a passport," he notes. "Where is my government?" he asks. "I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free." Click for his full column. (More Guantanamo Bay stories.)