Guantanamo detainees are staging a fresh wave of hunger strikes ahead of the seventh anniversary of the controversial prison camps — a campaign a lawyer links to the speedy release of Osama bin Laden's driver from U.S. military detention.
As of Thursday, 30 of the 250 war-on-terror detainees were classified as hunger strikers, 25 of whom were being fed through tubes in their noses, said Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum at Guantanamo.
Defense lawyers have long described the tactic as a spontaneous protest against their indefinite detention.
Military officials see it as part of a choreographed power struggle between detainees and their guards.
Washington lawyer David Remes, who represents 17 Yemenis, said some of his clients launched the latest hunger strike after Yemeni Salim Hamdan went home in November, a month shy of completion of his 66-month prison sentence.
''They've actually gone ballistic at the fact that Hamdan, who was convicted of supporting terrorism, was released and they, who have been charged with nothing, continue to languish there,'' said Remes, who met with clients before Christmas.
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