With nearly every one of the 166 Guantánamo prisoners now under lockdown — back in solitary existence after years of communal living — the military has reverted to a battle rhythm reminiscent of the Bush administration.
Pre-cleared captives awaiting political change are confined for long stretches to 8-by-12 cells, each man praying behind his own steel door, deciding for himself whether to eat a solitary meal.
Meantime, troops are back to managing the most intimate aspects of a detainee’s daily life — when he will be shackled and taken to a shower, when he’ll be shackled and taken to a recreation yard, when he’ll get to hear the call to prayer through a slot in the door rather than muffled through the prison’s walls.
And, for 100 hunger strikers, the military decides when to shackle each man into a restraint chair for tube feedings — an austere, exacting control of the lives of these men that the prison’s Muslim advisor warns will not stop the next suicide.
Ricardo Sanchez came to the United States from his native Mexico, illegally, when he was nine....
