Gitmo prisoner becomes NY Times contributor

Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, is now a New York Times op-ed contributor. If only for just this once.

Via a phone call to his lawyer at the anti-Gitmo charity Reprieve that was then published as a column in the Times, Moqbel details the hunger strike he and other prisoners are engaging in and the force feeding that has followed...

An excerpt:

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray. ...

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

Full column here.

The Times has written in the past in favor of closing Gitmo.

@eScarry