The number inmates participating in a hunger strike at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has risen sharply in the past few weeks to include more than half of those held at the military-run facility.
Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman on detainee issues for the Pentagon, said on Monday the number stood at 84, up from just over 30 less than a month ago.
Alan and Judy Gross during a vacation trip to Israel.
An American imprisoned in Cuba, along with his wife in the United States, is suing the U.S. government and the group for which he worked, citing what they call an "abject failure to advise, train and protect him."
Alan Gross, 63, has been held in a Cuban prison since December 2009. He was arrested for bringing in banned communications equipment as part of a State Department program to spread democracy and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The Grosses claim that both the U.S. government and the contractor, Development Alternatives Inc., based in Bethesda, Maryland, "failed to disclose adequately to Mr. Gross, both before and after he began traveling to Cuba, the material risks that he faced due to his participation in the project."
The suit also charges that the State Department and DAI failed to provide him with education and training that were necessary to minimize the risk of harm to him, and should have delayed the project "until the risks subsided."
But little of the drama of those times reached the remote Lopez farm in western Cuba, where palm trees vastly outnumber human residents.
ING Bank has agreed to pay a $619 million penalty for moving billions of dollars through the U.S. financial system at the behest of Cuban and Iranian clients, acts that violated economic sanctions.
Appeals from seven detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, contesting their open-ended custody, were turned aside by the Supreme Court on Monday.
Without comment, the justices refused to take a fresh look at the "habeas" petitions by the suspected foreign enemy fighters and what rights they have to make their claims in federal court.
In the so-called Boumediene ruling in 2008, the high court said "enemy combatants" held overseas in U.S. military custody have a right to a "meaningful review" of their detention in the civilian legal justice system. It would force the government to present evidence and justify keeping the prisoners indefinitely, without charges.
But a federal appeals court in Washington has since refused to order the release of any detainee filing a habeas corpus writ, in some cases rejecting such orders from lower-court judges.
According to Pentagon figures, 169 foreign men are still at the Guantanamo facility, including five "high-value" suspected terrorists from the 9/11 attacks set to go on military trial.
Her name says its all – Castro. Mariela Castro Espin, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro has been granted a visa to travel to the United States next week to attend an academic conference. That decision by the U.S. government has ignited a firestorm of controversy on Capitol Hill and the streets of Miami. Jill Dougherty reports.
Detainee "too dangerous to release"
Mahmoud Abd al Aziz is a balding 34-year-old Yemeni who has spent most of his adult life detained at Guantanamo Bay. He was one of the very first to be taken there, ten years ago this month, after being captured on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Al Aziz is one of 35 detainees who have been held at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002. Most are Yemeni; all are adjudged to represent a continuing threat to the United States. Al Aziz says he only confessed to knowing Osama bin Laden under duress; he’d gone to Kandahar to study the Koran. Prosecutors maintain others saw him at al Qaeda safehouses and a training camp.
Another Yemeni detainee, Allal Ab Aljallil abd al Rahman, said he went to Afghanistan for medical treatment; prosecutors say his name appeared on computer files recovered from al Qaeda safehouses.
Saying he is "disappointed and perplexed," former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Tuesday he is leaving Cuba without any progress in seeking the release of jailed American Alan Gross.
Richardson, speaking to media in Havana, said he would be leaving Cuba Wednesday morning.
"I have exhausted all possibilities after one week to visit Alan Gross," Richardson said. "I tried all channels."
Richardson, who arrived in Havana September 7, was given the cold shoulder by the Cuban government. He was not able to see Gross, nor did he meet with Cuban leader Raul Castro. "My conclusions are that it is possible the Cuban government has made a decision not to improve relations with the United States," he said Tuesday.