There's a huge hunger strike at Guantánamo, in response to incidents of prisoner abuse. This is, reports the Times, at least the fourth such strike, and possibly the largest, most widespread, and most threatening to the Gitmo brass. The Times does not say how long this particular strike has been going on and reveals that earlier hunger strikes were hushed up by the military and Red Cross and not reported by the major news media. The Times reports that as many as 200 prisoners may be participating, though the army figure is significantly lower (105.) A previous strike won a prisoner grievance committee, but apparently the base administrators only allowed the committee to function for several days before they disbanded it.

One law enforcement official who has been fully briefed on the
events at Guantánamo said senior military officials had grown increasingly
worried about their capability to control the situation. A senior military
official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, described the situation
as greatly troublesome for the camp's authorities and said they had tried
several ways to end the hunger strike, without success.
The comments of the
officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, probably because their
accounts conflict with the more positive descriptions in official military
accounts, generally mirrored the statements of lawyers for the detainees, who
have received their information from face-to-face interviews with their clients.
Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer for several of the detainees, said he
was visiting some of his clients in August when the most recent strike began. He
said that a detainee, Omar Deghayes, told him that the strike was largely to
protest their long imprisonment without being charged with any crime as well as
the conditions of their confinement.
He said that Mr. Deghayes, a Libyan who
has lived in London, told him: "Look, I'm dying a slow death in this place as it
is. I don't have any hope of fair treatment, so what have I got to
lose?"