U.S. activists rebuffed at Guantanamo Bay

HAVANA -- U.S. activists camping at a Cuban military checkpoint outside the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay were rebuffed Tuesday in their attempt to gain access to terror suspects held at the facility.

Members of the Christian-oriented Witness Against Torture began a hunger strike at the checkpoint on Monday after a five-day march from the eastern Cuban city of Santiago.

They said they have not received a reply to their formal request to gain access to the base. On Tuesday one of the activists, Gary Ashbeck, called the base on a cell phone, only to have communication cut off after a brief exchange with an operator.

Stacey Byington, a civilian spokeswoman for U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, told The Associated Press in an e-mail that access is limited to those with official or authorized business.

Three of the 25 American activists headed home Tuesday, but 22 others continued a water-only fast at the Cuban military checkpoint, about five miles outside the U.S. base.

"(We are going) to spread the word that people are being tortured at Guantanamo," Patricia Santoro, of Jersey City, N.J., one of the departing activists, said during a stop in Havana.

The detention center has become a symbol of the dispute over detainee abuse by the U.S. military. Thirty-two prisoners are on hunger strike to protest what they say is cruel and inhumane treatment.

Twenty-five of those prisoners are being fed through tubes.

U.S. officials insist the hundreds of prisoners held at Guantanamo are treated humanely at the remote base on Cuba's eastern tip. The government says they are enemy combatants, not prisoners of war, and are not entitled to the same rights afforded under the Geneva Conventions.

The activists said they were not concerned about sanctions they might face at home for traveling to Cuba, which is under a decades- old U.S. trade and travel embargo.

"It's my job to be with the poor and the oppressed," said the Rev. Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest from California.

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