Chronicle on Cuba - May 2006

Terrorism

May 20: An important United Nations panel roundly criticized the United States on Friday for its treatment of terrorism suspects, and called for shutting down the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The panel's criticism came as military officials at Guantánamo disclosed the most serious disturbances by prisoners there since the camp opened four years ago, and reported new suicide attempts that had left two detainees hospitalized and unconscious. Military officials said the prisoners' actions were apparently aimed at raising political pressure on the Bush administration over its detention policy. Pressure was also ratcheted up by the report issued in Geneva by the United Nations Committee Against Torture. (The New York Times, 20/5/06)

May 29: Seventy-five prisoners at the US naval base in Guantanamo were on a hunger strike, joining a few who have refused food and been force-fed since August, a military official said. Cmdr. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the Guantanamo detention operation, called the hunger strike an attempt by the prisoners to gain media attention and pressure the United States to release about 460 men held there as enemy combatants. Hunger strikes have flared periodically since the first suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners were taken to the US base in southeast Cuba in 2002. (Reuters, 29/5/06)

May 31: At a UN Security Council meeting, Cuba denounced the high cost of innumerable terrorist actions undertaken against the island over the last 47 years, mostly organized from the United States. Speaking at a meeting on threats caused by terrorism, Cuban alternate Ambassador to the UN, Ileana Nuñez recalled the 3,478 deaths and 2,099 wounded and/or permanently physically impaired caused by these actions, as well as enormous economic losses, Prensa Latina news agency reported. (Granma International, 30/5/06)