The G-Blocks

A few months ago, we speculated that there must have been hunger strikes amongst the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but that, unlike the IRA hunger strikers, the Pentagon had the inherent advantage of being able to cover them up. It therefore has to count as a marginal improvement that the Pentagon is now at least announcing that indeed, there are hunger strikers in Gitmo, and that there's one going on right now:

Fifty-two inmates at [Gitmo] prison for foreign terrorism suspects have begun a hunger strike to protest their detention.

The detainees, among some 500 al Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. Navy base, have refused at least nine consecutive meals, the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo said in a statement on Thursday.

One possibility is that the Pentagon decided to make this announcement because more information was coming out about the tactic anyway:

The US military statement came a day after one of two Afghan men released from the camp after three years said after arriving back in Kabul that 105 prisoners had just staged a hunger strike.

Remember that Dubya's Supreme Court nominee has ruled in favour of the Gitmo detentions.

Article 39 of the Magna Carta, 1215 AD:

No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land.