The government is skirting the Geneva Conventions and other international human rights standards by refusing to immediately release Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni Guantánamo detainee suffering from severe malnutrition and deterioration following an eight-year hunger strike, the Center for Constitutional Rights argued in a legal brief filed on Friday.
Ba Odah has been held at Guantánamo since 2002. He has never been charged with a crime. He began a peaceful hunger strike in 2007, and in 2009 he was cleared for release — as soon as Yemen became more stable or the government could find someplace else for him to go.
He is still waiting, now down to 74 pounds — a “chronic, life-threatening and potentially irreversible” condition, according to his lawyers.