Hunger Striker Whose Weight Dropped to 74 lbs Released From Guantanamo to
Saudi Arabia
Second CCR Client Also Among Those Released
Center for Constitutional Rights, press@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, April 16, 2016
https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/hunger-striker-whose-weight-dropped-74-lbs-released-guant-namo-0
New York--Today, the Department of Defense announced the transfer to the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) clients
Tariq Ba Odah, a longtime hunger-striking Guantanamo prisoner, and Mohammed
Al-Hamiri, along with seven other prisoners. Both Mr. Ba Odah and Mr.
Al-Hamiri were cleared for release more than five years ago. Mr. Ba Odah had
been on hunger strike since 2007--over nine years--to protest his indefinite
detention and conditions of confinement at Guantanamo. Over the last year of
his imprisonment, his weight hovered at just 74 pounds, 56 percent of his
ideal body weight.
Of Tariq Ba Odah’s release, Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney Omar
Farah said:
The government played Russian roulette with Mr. Ba Odah’s life for more than
a year. It stood by as he wasted away on hunger strike to 74 pounds,
intervening only to force liquid supplements through his nose, block his
appeal for humanitarian relief in federal court, and sabotage a deal that
would have secured his freedom and access to emergency medical care months
ago. That he survived is not so much a cause for celebration as it is a
reckoning that ought to remind the White House of the cost of elevating
politics over the life and liberty of a human being. Mr. Ba Odah’s transfer
today ends one of the most appalling chapters in Guantanamo’s sordid
history. Now that Mr. Ba Odah is finally free, we are hopeful that the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will provide him the sophisticated medical care he
desperately needs.
In June 2015, CCR filed an emergency motion for Mr. Ba Odah’s immediate
release on medical grounds. At the time, three medical experts described him
as being at risk of sudden death. In a filing under seal, the government
opposed his release, a move over which Obama administration officials were
reportedly divided. In late December, a special report by Reuters revealed
that Pentagon officials had obstructed an earlier possibility for Mr. Ba
Odah’s transfer by refusing to release his medical records (despite Mr. Ba
Odah’s authorization) to a foreign delegation considering accepting him into
their country.
Of Mohammed Al-Hamiri’s release, Mr. Farah said:
When Mr. Al-Hamiri left Saudi Arabia in 2001 to receive medical care in
Pakistan, he could not have imagined he would be torn away from his family
in Jeddah for over 14 years. Now, after spending more than a third of his
young life senselessly imprisoned at Guantanamo, he will finally be reunited
with them. We are grateful to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for allowing Mr.
Al-Hamiri to come home, and we are confident that it will provide the
support Mr. Al-Hamiri needs to begin recovering from the torment of so many
years at Guantanamo.
Mr. Al-Hamiri once wrote from Guantanamo, "When freedom touches the dark
walls of life, it brightens them with colors and brings hope back to those
faces that have been waiting for so long." Mr. Al-Hamiri and Mr. Ba Odah
anticipated being reunited with their families for years. Their legal team
at CCR is hopeful that they will quickly readjust to their new lives in
freedom in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Both Mr. Ba Odah and Mr. Al-Hamiri were picked up in Pakistan by local
Pakistani authorities and turned over to the U.S. military. They arrived at
Guantanamo in their early twenties and endured treatment at the hands of the
U.S. military that they described as physical and psychological torture.
Like many of the men who have languished in Guantanamo the longest, Tariq Ba
Odah and Mohammed Al-Hamiri are Yemeni citizens. For many years, President
Obama refused to repatriate or resettle Yemeni prisoners, keeping them
trapped in Guantanamo because of their citizenship.
In February 2016, shortly after Guantanamo entered its 15th year of
operation, President Obama presented his plan to close the prison. CCR
attorneys say issuing written plans, especially with only months left before
President Obama leaves office, is too little too late and the president must
accelerate the pace of transfers and review boards immediately. They
emphasize that the prison at Guantanamo must be emptied and closed, and not
imported to the United States, and note that several CCR clients--among them
Ghaleb Nasser Al-Bihani, Muhammadi Davliatov, Zaher Hamdoun, and Mohammed
Kamin--remain imprisoned despite being cleared for release.
The Center for Constitutional Rights has led the legal battle over
Guantanamo for more than 14 years--representing clients in two Supreme Court
cases and organizing and coordinating hundreds of pro bono lawyers across
the country, ensuring that all the men detained at Guantanamo have had the
option of legal representation. CCR is responsible for many Guantanamo cases
in many venues, representing men in their habeas cases in federal court and
before the military commissions and Periodic Review Boards, the families of
men who died at Guantanamo, and men who have been released and are seeking
accountability in international courts.
