US Military Doctors Infect Guantanamo Detainee with HIV

Home
US Military Doctors Infect Guantanamo Detainee with HIV
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2008-01-30 22:49. Media
From CagePrisoners

US Attorney H. Candace Gorman has revealed that her client Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi has been infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Al Ghizzawi believes the infection happened during medical procedures at Guantanamo in 2004 when he was given a blood test which resulted in alarm amongst the hospital staff. Al Ghizzawi was not given any explanation for the alarm at the time. As a result Al-Ghizzawi has now been told that he is suffering from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Having already been suffering from Hepatitis B and Tuberculosis (which he also acquired at Guantanamo) Al Ghizzawi has been held in severe isolation in Camp 6.

Gorman filed an emergency application with the US Supreme Court asking that the US military be ordered to treat Al-Ghizzawi’s medical problems and for medical records to be turned over to her. Chief Judge Roberts denied the motion despite it being stated by the chief medical doctor at Guantanamo, Dr Sollock, that Al-Ghizzawi did not suffer from any ill health on arrival to the base.

Al-Ghizzawi’s health has rapidly deteriorated and Cageprisoners calls for the immediate release of his medical records so that adequate medical treatment can be given to the detainee. Spokesman for Cageprisoners and former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg said,

“That a man who has endured more than half a decade in the world’s most infamous prison – without charge or trial – is now infected with the world’s most dreaded disease is preposterous. How will the US administration explain this one to his family? More ‘robust interrogation techniques’?”

more at:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/30588

How do we ever recover as a nation from this darkness that has overwhelmed us as a people that we would be party to this horror?

& HIV or on purpose. No charges after 4 years in a Hell Hole should make Americans proud.

And the fact that it happened is a nightmare for us.

I am a stranger in a very strange and truly fucked up land

The US president is giving speeches all over the world about freedom and democracy. And in the meantime, he has set up a concentration camp in Cuba where he keeps people who probably have done nothing wrong for years and years, without trials, without charges etc. And they are getting tortured. But the US president and his administration will walk free, they will never be held accountable.

Why isn't Guantanamo Bay an issue in the primaries? Why is it never talked about? Has any presidential candidate ever spoken out against it? Because there are no Americans involved, it doesn't count?

Removal of a blood sample does not involve anyone else's bodily fluids.

Someone is either terribly confused or a liar.

about that explanation. I can understand how someone might be exposed to Hepatitis B and Tuberculosis in a prison but aids from a blood test. :mad: :mad: :mad:

heya V! :)

The only difference is HBV is not transmitted through breast milk.

HIV and HBV are both considered STDs. TB is the only one that makes sense in this claim.

All this article did was fill me with more questions. Could have been better written, imho.

something is a little sus here

needles and syringes are involved in blood tests (unless one is grossly incompetent or deliberately malicious).

They don't get to blame any "blood test" for this. They need to blame violation of sterile protocols.

They are saying there was some alarm during the blood test - and he thinks that is when he was infected.

Something like someone saying "Oh shit..." when they realize that they just used the same needle twice or something like that.

Sometimes I wish people with no science background were barred from writing about anything involving science.

:shrug:

mengele would be so proud.

It would not be any 'accident'-

Indefinite detentions? Check.
Denied representation? Check.
No charges? Checkaroonie.
No trials? Checkity, check, check.
Medical experimentation. Cheee-eck.
Making lampshades out of their skin? Oooh, unfinished business for the Bush administration!

Obama Says Gitmo Facility Should Close - washingtonpost.com

Jun 24, 2007 ... SAN ANTONIO -- Barack Obama told a Texas crowd on Sunday that he wants the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee facility closed _ a step the Bush ...

htttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/24/AR2007062401046.html -

Statement from Hillary Rodham Clinton - Just Hillary.com - The ...
SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON CALLS FOR CLOSURE OF GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION CENTER. .... In my prepared statement, I suggested that the Congress direct the ...

www.justhillary.com/herwords/gitmo0426.php

and is looking for cover.

How? Either he was raped by the guards or, what, the bed? Seriously--how could anyone in solitary get AIDS from sex?

in afganistan. More probable way to get aids than from the gitmo guards.

Soooooo . . . how else could he have gotten it in solitary?

Amnesty International does not read like this article. My vote if for the simple version, unprotected sex.

Why not just kill the guy with any number of invisible means rather than giving him hiv..

It is bullshit.

HIV acquired like others have in prison...unprotected sex.

He is in solitary confinement. What part of solitary confinement didn't you get?

(Oh good god why do I bother?)

hanging downtown. No one has bothered to take it down for a long time.

a dna sample of the virus this person is infected with would reveal plenty about where it came from. You don't get AIDS from a blood test.

TB infections are common in those suffering from AIDS, in places like NYC, not just gitmo.

The article has slant, which is fine, I try to look at both angles.

The other angle being he got hiv during unprotected sex, like many do in prison, even here in the us..

So do we pay for anti retroviral (if he is not already past that point) or send him back to where we captured him to die?

Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi has been detained at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay for five years. He has told his lawyer that his health began to worsen during his first year of detention, and has steadily deteriorated. In September 2006, he found out that doctors at the Guantánamo hospital had diagnosed him with hepatitis B and tuberculosis and not told him.

Amnesty International fears that Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi may not be receiving appropriate medical treatment. The Commander of the Guantánamo hospital and Joint-Task Force surgeon has stated that Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi does not want to be treated for his illnesses. However his lawyers have asserted that neither he nor they were informed of the diagnosis until September 2006 and that he has since requested treatment but has received none.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions_details.asp?ActionID=376

The headline is completely misleading and in no way reflects the article. It's a vague assumption at best...that is if the article is true.

...where in the hell have you gone?

The "Alarm" from the blood test might have been the staff finding out he had AIDS.

To cheap to use new ones or on purpose! I would not be surprised!
Edit: Re Syphilis Study on Blacks in the 30's and 40's by the U$A.

I am beyond words.

Maybe thats why it didn't show up when they first screened him medically. But I don't see anything here so far saying he was infected by the doctors on the base. And I hate to say it but people... In prison... Tend to do it with each other. <_< Perhaps he contracted it sexually from some other detainee? I'm baffled at this personally. Most likely a false negative I think.

Just to gage how well winds carried illness to populations? I recall they invited schools in Utah to have students come out and watch mushroom clouds from nearby Nevada when I was a youngster. Didn't they infect some black soldiers with syphilis a few decades before that? Didn't some Native Americans get some badly infected blankets once upon a time?

Yeah, our history is so squeaky clean it is much more probably this guy at GITMO must've had the cooties before we snatched him had locked him up for years without charges than somebody with power of life and death over him (and no real accountability) screwed up.

the African American men were already infected with syphilis. It was an observational study and the participants were not given an STD by our government. Still heinous, but I just wanted to clarify.

have been treated by doctors and the medical research community. J. Marion Sims, considered the father of American gynecology, used to experiment on African American women, in order to offer better treatment to the slave owners' wives. I was just clarifying the misinformation about Tuskegee.

"Al Ghizzawi believes the infection happened during medical procedures at Guantanamo in 2004 when he was given a blood test which resulted in alarm amongst the hospital staff."

Was the blood test considered a medical procedure?

Or was he undergoing a medical procedure (and what was it?), which resulted in having blood drawn for blood work?

the bounty method rounded up a lot of innocents. What a fucking country....

<snip>

“Al-Ghizzawi is an innocent civilian turned over to the Americans in response to a bounty (cash American dollars for Arabs). Al-Ghizzawi has been taken from his wife and young daughter and he will die if he is not given immediate medical care, and yet the American military cannot be bothered… I ask that all of you please contact the American state department and ask them to release this innocent and very ill man.”

A double heart-attack of Saifullah Paracha, the death of an Afghan detainee due to cancer and the deaths of four other detainees in Guantanamo all highlight the serious medical difficulties of those being detained. The US administration must put pressure on the public to give full medical treatment to those under its control. However, the medical situation only reiterates the more pressing concern that these men must either be charged for crimes under a system that is recognised to be fair and open, or must be released expeditiously.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-candace-gorman-/why-i-am-representing-a-_b_29734.html?p=2

Why I am Representing a "Detainee" at Guantanamo

Posted September 19, 2006 | 03:38 PM (EST)


I'm not being paid. In fact, I am paying to do this. In fact, I am paying a lot of money to do this because in the legal profession, time is money, and I am also spending an incredible amount of time on this matter.







First you have to decide who are those murderers and terrorists. Is it some creditor, a bad neighbor, or perhaps someone on the next block that you don't really know? Do you care when the bounty is enough money to take care of your family for the rest of your life? The reality is that a lot of people wouldn't care, and as it turns out, a lot of people in war ravaged countries didn't care.

So now, I am representing one of the hundreds of men being held at Guantánamo because they were turned over for a bounty. I am not from a big law firm (there are many big law firms that have taken on these cases, for which we should all be very appreciative). I am at attorney with almost 25 years experience, but working with me is only one young associate and a para-legal. However, I am spending my money because, to me, this is about as important as it gets. My government, our government, has turned it's back on the rule of law (not to mention the rest of the world) and now it is up to the rest of us to try to set things right.

Let me tell you a little about my client. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi was a civilian in Afghanistan. He was a shopkeeper that sold honey and bread. He has a wife and a young daughter. His daughter was almost six months old the last time he saw her; that was five years ago. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi was originally from Libya, but he had lived in Afghanistan since shortly after the Russians left. His wife is Afghani.

When the American bombs started to fall on Mr. Al-Ghizzawi's city he did what most people would do, he fled. He took his wife and infant daughter to his wife's parent's home in the country, to escape the bombs. Unfortunately, Mr. Al-Ghizzawi was not well known in the area where his in-laws lived and, being Arab, he was apprehended by bounty hunters. The bounty hunters turned Mr. Al-Ghizzawi over to the Northern Alliance, who in turn turned him over to the United States and he was sent to Guantánamo. That was almost five years ago. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi has never been charged with anything while at Guantánamo and has never been told what he is accused of doing. He has never been given the opportunity to prove his innocence.

That alone is pretty pathetic, but there is more. Mr. Al-Ghizzawi is ill. In fact, he is probably dying of liver cancer. But you see, our government doesn't make mistakes, so it will not acknowledge that Mr. Al-Ghizzawi (and hundreds of others at Guantánamo) was wrongly picked up, wrongly held and not receiving proper medical care.

I was allowed to visit my client for the first time in July after representing him for almost a year. It was readily apparent when I met Mr. Al-Ghizzawi that he was ill. He was jaundiced and gaunt looking, he was clearly in pain when he was talking with me and was suffering from other symptoms, which we discussed. When I returned to my office, I started to call doctors to help me determine what was wrong with Mr. Al-Ghizzawi. I was eventually referred to the renowned Dr. Donald Jensen of the University of Chicago. Of course, without seeing medical records and having appropriate tests performed a diagnosis is difficult, but Dr. Jensen is concerned that Mr. Al-Ghizzawi is suffering from liver cancer. Liver cancer can be successfully treated if caught early enough, but our government hasn't been concerned with figuring out what is wrong with Mr. Al-Ghizzawi much less treating him.