Guantanamo prison is not US "only torture camp"

An American antiwar activist says Washington does not want “its evil torture practices to get out" by trying to close a court hearing on force-feeding of a prisoner at the Guantanamo prison that is “not the only place the US tortures people.”

News ID: 60225

Date: 01 October 2014 - 11:00

Cindy Sheehan told Press TV in a phone interview on Tuesday that the reason that the hearing “would damage the United States is because torture is illegal and immoral. It’s illegal under international law; it’s illegal under our own constitution and of course it’s immoral and it radicalizes people."

She made the remarks when asked about 43-year-old Abu Wa'el Dhiab from Syria, who started his hunger strike 18 months ago to protest his indefinite confinement without charge.

The prisoner is protesting force-feeding procedures administered by authorities.

Earlier on Monday, the Justice Department claimed that most of the information about Dhiab is classified, and said that "an open hearing risks unauthorized disclosure of classified or protected information. The record in this case is large, with classified and protected information often inextricably intertwined with unclassified information."

US President Barack Obama has promised to close down the prison in 2009.

However, the activist said, “Still we have 150 prisoners there some of them are on hunger strike and being force-fed."

"Close to a hundred percent of people at Guantanamo didn't do anything that would be harmful to the United States," she added.

"I went down to the Guantanamo in 2007 and we get a protest right in front of the gates of Guantanamo,” she said, adding that “I was with a man who had been there in Guantanamo and he was tortured profoundly for two or three years, he was a British citizen before they finally let him out."

Sheehan also noted that rights activists should have a commission to air everything that happens in the prison.

"The people who have been illegally incarcerated there for so long should have regeneration paid to them,” she said.

"Guantanamo is not the only place the US tortures people. So we have to really work hard on exposing these crimes against humanity that the US Empire is perpetrating," Sheehan said.