“I will not eat until they restore my dignity.” That’s what Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel told his lawyer by phone from Guantánamo Bay. On April 14, Moqbel’s cry became a harrowing New York Times op-ed, his message mixing despair, defiance and warnings of impending death. “One man here weighs just 77 pounds,” Moqbel wrote. “Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.”
Days later, The Guardian published a letter from another hunger striker, Shaker Aamer, whose words cut to the heart of the protest. “As of today, I’ve spent more than 11 years in Guantánamo Bay,” he wrote. “To be precise, it’s been 4,084 long days and nights. I’ve never been charged with any crime.”
Moqbel and Aamer are among the…