U.S. Military Bans McDonald's and Other Food From Gitmo Legal Meetings
By: Lauren Walker
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The new rule ends a decade-long practice and one that defense lawyers say brings comfort to their clients.Mladen Antonov/AFP/GettyWorldGuantanamoGuantanamo bayGuantanamo detaineesMcDonalds
Beginning on Wednesday, lawyers visiting their clients at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will no longer be permitted to bring them food. The reason, according to the U.S. military: health and safety concerns.
"Ongoing patterns of possible improper sanitation and health practices by having meals brought into the legal rooms triggered us [to] review our practice of outside meals being brought in," says Navy Captain Tom Gresback, the director of public affairs at the prison. "A legal room is not designed to be a dining facility."
The new rule ends a decade-long practice, and one that defense lawyers say brings comfort to the prisoners, many of whom have spent years behind bars in legal limbo. "Sometimes the food we bring is the only thing from the outside world they've seen in months," Alka Pradhan, an attorney with Reprieve, which represents around a dozen clients at Gitmo toldThe Miami Herald. "They really look forward to it."
Lawyers began meeting their clients in 2005, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision giving detainees the right to challenge their detention in American courts. Since then, the attorneys have brought their clients everything from homemade food to Egg McMuffins from a McDonald's located on the U.S. military base. By 2007, the prison made a kitchen available to lawyers who wished to reheat or refrigerate meals for prisoners.
There are currently 122 detainees housed at the facility, 57 of whom have been cleared for release, but remain imprisoned due to a political impasse in the U.S. over what to do with them. Some have been on hunger strike for years as a way to protest their detention, but they are willing to eat a few times a year when their attorneys visit them. Otherwise, they won't eat voluntarily and are frequently force-fed by the prison staff, a procedure many detainees have described as painful.
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Flags fly at half mast for Colin Powell, October 20, 2021
Cute photograph without the ever present rusting barbed wire.
What people remember.
The Caravan looks like an 1984
The pale blue gem a late 70's GM or Ford?
Gotta love Cuba.
looks like a ford granada to me, but it's been so long ...
wouldn't providing an extra value meal be considered culinary torture in other cultures?
What are the odds that on a day I reminisce about Freedom burgers from Cuba's one and only McDonalds
that they would be banned from government legal facilities
on a an overseas government base.
Because the only lawyers who would represent the prisoners cannot clean up after themselves.
On a more serious note, we are feeding and housing 57 ( ^%@(*)&_)*$$ ) now 58, who no one else wants back.
On the other seed I asked what are we going to do with the most recent guy the Federal Judge said we can't hold any longer?
Deliver them to the Taliban and suffer the resulting celebrations?
Or tie them to the perimeter security wall to that base in Syria that was shelled today?
( I do love shell fish )
Am I supposed to care if scum of he earth terrorists are comfortable. To be perfectly honest I don't give a rats fat patoot. The only food I would allow in are BLTs and ham sandwiches.
No, I don't care if you care or don't care.
These 58 or so prisoners of war have either never been charged
or cleared of defending their country in their country against NATO forces.
They have been prisoners of war, some for 19 years or longer, for a war that ended long ago, if not 6 weeks ago.
Its your taxpayer dollars being wasted.
Any thoughts?
It’s also our very own American concepts of justice being subverted and perverted. What kind of country are we that we can hold people prisoner for years (decades, even) without charges?
You mean like we did with German and Japanese POWs after WW2? In fact soldiers that surrendered after hostilities were not even considered POWs and were not entitle to Geneva Convention protections
As far as the those detained in GITMO, they were not covered by the convention at all as they were not fighting under a recognized national flag nor were the in military uniforms and could have been shot as spies as soon as they were captured.
All 540,000 German prisoners were out of the US by the end of 1946,
most with a good understanding of English and a few hundred dollars in their pockets.
Unfortunately for them, many were detained in the UK and France for as much as three more years.
Due to cultural reasons, the US had taken only 27,000 Japanese prisoners and
40% died from suicide, starvation or disease before the end of the war, the survivors were released
to the new Japanese government by the end of 1946.
That only relieves them of being charged by a military court or tribunal.
The 57 or 58 out of the 100plus should not be incarcerated for 20 years without charges
That does not reflect our values.
It comes down to what do we stand for? Do we only do the right thing when the Geneva convention applies? If so, then we really have no standards at all.
Prisoners of war don't get civilian trials.
That is the whole damn problem with the system. Civilian courts aren't equipped to handle terrorists. You get one liberal judge and the precedent for releasing everyone is set. Most committed no crimes on US soil. Civilian courts have limits on their reach; that is the main arguments even bad lawyers will be using. This is another left over from the Obama administration.
Of course Obama also decided rather than taking prisoners it was easier to end them through extra judicial drone killings; including two US civilians. Removes the muss, fuss, and headache of actually having to try them. Dead men tell no tales; so it also removed the capacity of gathering intelligence from them.
OMG Ronin...
the first "detainees" were delivered to GITMO in 2002
Left overs from the Bush Administration.
Dems Bad, libs worse...
btw, can you point me to the official Senate declaration of war against Afghanistan
that would make the defenders of Afghan official combatants,
or do we just violate our own rules as well as the GC
because the Afstanees are just Muslim ragheads?
Do you feel like that towards all other faiths that have dietary standards like Jews, Hindus and Buddhists?
If they commit terrorist acts or harbor terrorist's that act against us and kill our citizens absolutely. I will give .no quarter nor will I show any mercy to my country's enemys
Hmm. Seems petty. Seems needlessly mean.
I'm with you. This just seems really mean.
Mean my ass! We were much too kind and generous to them
the terrorists we are aware of
were all killed by suicide 09/11/2001
over 20 years ago
yet we invaded Afstain under Bush,
killed Bin Laden under Obama 10 years ago
and are still holding 219 prisoners of war
for a war that should have ended when Bin Laden was killed
but persisted until Biden pulled out.
58 men accused of nothing but resisting the American/Nato invasion
of their countries.
20 effing years in many cases. Political prisoners.
Banning McDonalds is just spiteful.
We don’t know that. That’s the problem. Where is the evidence they deserve to be imprisoned at all? Present it under scrutiny in a court of law and then we’ll have something to talk about.
The same people who incorrectly told us Sadaam Hussein was manufacturing and stockpiling WMDs, including nuclear, are the ones who told us these people are terrorists who can’t be let loose. I see no reason to trust them.
So what does everyone want to do with these terrorists at GITMO, release them all back into the wild so that they can go back to planning killing us again? They will be heroes back in Afghanistan- probably get good paying positions in the Taliban government training the next generation of terrorists and hunting down all opposition and killing it.
Want them out of GITMO? Put them all on the oldest US military cargo plane we have. Fly them out over the middle of the Pacific; let the pilots bail; and see if they really are Allah's chosen ones. Adding an extra cargo of expired meat to the plane is optional. That is a far better chance than would be given any US soldier or civilian captured by the Taliban or any of the terrorist factions in Afghanistan.
If they really are terrorists. I don’t think it’s asking too much that their accusers be required to prove it.
Like you said earlier, the term terrorists was assigned by the same people
who duped Colin Powell into making us believe that Iraq was honeycombed
with WMDs. Liars.
Now we call them "detainees" ... for decades.
There is a great docuseries on Netflix called "Turning Point 9/11" that really covers the horrors of the War on Terror and Gitmo. The Bush administration outright violated our laws and sadly the next two kept it going. Many of those rounded up and sent to Gitmo were just farmers forced to fight by the Taliban. Really sad America wasn't more outraged.
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How can we possibly defend this? There are 57 people that we acknowledge should not be in prison, and yet we hold on to them anyway. The rest of them are being held without trial and were not even allowed to see an attorney for years. This is the American system? This is American justice?
This is the kind of the shit we condemn other countries - dictatorships like China, North Korea, Russia - for all the time.
Butt, butt they are the same religion as the assholes who flew themselves into the World Trade Center towers and the
Pentagon.
Cost of the fiasco in Afghanistan $8Trillion.
Cost of the "War on Terror" $21 Trillion (900,000 causalities ) to destroy Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan
and Congress is deadlocked in partisan BS over spending 350 Billion a year for ten years on rebuilding American cities
and infrastructure
on American soil $ 3.5 Trillion.
BULLSHIT
Exactly. You know they’re terrorists because they’re Arab or Muslim. Just like in WWII, we knew they were the enemy because they were Japanese. Even though many legal scholars consider the Korematsu case that upheld internment to be one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court, we have clearly learned nothing.
And I can guarantee that if Biden does the right thing and releases the 58 anywhere,
he will be excoriated by the same people who protested getting out of Afghanistan.
so tell me.How many coalition troops that were taken prisoner were released alive? What did you think
no about what happened to Daniel Pearl?
'We' killed over 900,000 people in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, at a loss of 60,000
over 20 years including some pilots shot down and and two handsful of people captured,
rescued 5, paid ransom for 2 more. The rest were killed by their captors.
If you need more specifics, do your own damned research.
Daniel Pearl, journalist, kidnapped in Pakistan, decapitated in Pakistan.
When do you want to avenge him against Pakistan, a so called ally?
Let Mr. Biden Know as soon as possible please, since Pearl was killed in 2002,
or maybe you can get Steve Bannon or Alex Jones to start a Go Fund Me page for Pearl?
I guess it's never too late?
I don't think about Daniel Pearl or Evil Kenevil, ever.
They knew the risks of their "employment" and put their big boy pants on every day
they went to work, willfully, against everyone's advice.
Are we clear?
those imprisoned at Gitmo knew the hazards of becoming a terrorist. They should be pleased that they didn't have to pay the ultimate price Yet!
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You think Afghani dirt farmers defending their villages knew about Gitmo? or cared?
Defending their own homes got them 20 years detention without charges.
Actual terrorists were tried, served some time in Gitmo and were shipped off to Qatar
Estimates were that 85% of the 790 detainees were not terrorists,
During the Bush Admin 500 were transferred to the ME or released.
During the Obama Admin another 197 were transferred or released.
smh