A long-running hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay gained several participants in recent weeks amid complaints over conditions at a new unit of the prison, but a spokesman at the U.S. military base said Monday that the protest appeared to be losing steam,AP Reported. Thirteen strikers were being force-fed through tubes inserted into their noses, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, a Guantanamo spokesman. The strike, which began in 2005 and once involved 131 detainees, reached seventeen participants in the days before the conviction in March of Australian detainee David Hicks, who pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism and was sentenced to nine more months in prison. Lawyers and human rights advocates said the detainees were striking over conditions at Camp 6, a new unit where detainees are confined in solid-wall cells most of the day and have little contact with other prisoners or exposure to natural light. «The reports about the conditions at Camp 6 are deeply disturbing, and holding people indefinitely without legal process or access to family is an invitation to disaster,» said Hina Shamsi, a lawyer with Human Rights First, based in New York.
