From CloseGuantanamo.org | Original Article

Above: Witness Against Torture at The White House Friday June 26 displaying a drawing of Tariq Ba Odah

This is the harrowing story of Tariq Ba Odah, who has been on an uninterrupted hunger strike for eight years and four months, since February 2007, and now weighs just 74.5 pounds. As his lawyer, Omar Farah of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, explained, he looks like "a Holocaust survivor," and he is at risk of death. On Thursday, CCR submitted a motion to the District Court in Washington D.C. asking a judge to order his release.

Force-feeding hunger striking prisoners at Guantánamo has always appalled the medical profession, which maintains that it is completely unacceptable to force-feed mentally competent hunger strikers. In Tariq's case, the Obama administration should, in addition, be appalled that his life is at risk, because he shouldn't even be at Guantánamo.

Way back in 2009, the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established to review the cases of all the prisoners still held at the time, concluded that he should not continue to be held.

What you can do now:

To call for Tariq's release, call the White House on 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414 or submit a comment online.

You can also call the Department of Defense on 703-571-3343 and ask defense secretary Ash Carter to certify to Congress, as required by law, that it is safe to release Tariq.