Tariq Ba Odah is 36-year-old man,1.62 metres tall, but weighs only 33.7 kilogrammes. As he has not eaten voluntarily since 2007, maintaining one of the longest-running hunger strikes at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Ba Odah was picked up in Pakistan and turned over to the US, who sent him to Guantanamo, where he has been in a cell for over a decade without charge. He is kept in solitary confinement and with no human contact.
Joseph Margulies, counsel of record in the Supreme Court said the medical experts believe “his body has begun to cannibalise itself to survive, slowly consuming his organs”.
When his lawyer Farha last visited his client , Ba Odah barely looked human, his body was just “skin and bones”, and almost no muscles or tissues.
According to Farha Ba Odah is force-fed twice a day. He is strapped down and liquid is pumped through his nose into his stomach, Finding it shocking Faraha was involved giving him an immediate transfer from the prison as Gravely ill prisoners can be legally sent to another country.
The the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has asked – for the third time to extend its response until August 14, 2015. The reason for requesting the extension, the DoJ said, is that it needed to “further consider internally its response to petitioner’s motion”.
“Protesting by hunger striking is the only way to communicate [to those with freedom] what it means to be unjustly detained, to be put in a cell for over a decade without charge,” Ba Odah has explained of his situation, according to CCR.