Things are escalating at Guantanamo today...UPDATED

This press release just came from the powers to be at Gitmo... What this means is that the men are now all being held in isolation- in Camp 6 they had been held in communal living arrangements....All we know is that there was a major conflict yesterday and of course the other thing we know is that nothing the military says is to be believed...I would also note that all of this seems to have taken place hours after the International Red Cross left Guantanamo.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba –The commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) ordered the transition of detainees from communal to single cell living at Camp VI to ensure the health and security of those detainees. The commander ordered this change at 0510, 13 April 2013. This action was taken in response to efforts by the detainees to limit the guard force’s ability to observe the detainees by covering surveillance cameras, windows, and glass partitions. Round the clock monitoring is necessary to ensure security, order, and safety, as detainees continued a prolonged hunger strike by refusing regular camp-provided meals.

 In order to reestablish proper observation, the guards entered the Camp VI communal living spaces to transition detainees into single cells, remove obstructions to cameras, windows and partitions, and to assess the medical condition of each detainee. Some detainees resisted with improvised weapons, and in response, four less-than-lethal rounds were fired. There were no serious injuries to guards or detainees. 

The mission of Joint Task Force Guantanamo is to provide for the safe, legal, and humane care and custody of detainees. All detainees will continue to be treated in a safe, legal and humane manner.

New York times has a tiny bit more here...

Perhaps they will claim they didn't want to go there anyway....

We can only hope more countries will ban these war criminals.....

MOSCOW -- Russia on Saturday named 18 Americans banned from entering the country in response to Washington imposing sanctions on 18 Russians for alleged human rights violations. The list released by the Foreign Ministry includes John Yoo, a former U.S. Justice Department official who wrote legal memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques; David Addington, the chief of staff for former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney; and two former commanders of the Guantanamo Bay detention center: retired Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Adm. Jeffrey Harbeson. The move came a day after the United States announced its sanctions under the Magnitsky Law, named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested in 2008 for tax evasion after accusing Russian police officials of stealing $230 million in tax rebates. He died in prison the next year, allegedly after being beaten and denied medical treatment. Neither Washington nor Moscow put high-ranking or politically prominent figures on their lists, perhaps aiming to limit the effect on U.S.-Russian relations that have deteriorated, despite President Barack Obama's initiative to "reset" relations with Moscow. The Magnitsky law infuriated Russian authorities, and parliament quickly passed a retaliatory measure than banned Americans from adopting Russian children. Russia also has banned U.S. funding for any non-governmental organization deemed to be engaging in politics. "I think that both sides showed a definite restraint because in Washington and in Moscow there were hotheads demanding to inflate the list to an unthinkable size," parliament member Vyacheslav Nikonov, who focuses on foreign affairs, was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax. The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying there also is a "closed part" of the list of banned Americans and that the United States knows of its existence. The U.S. law in turn allows the administration to compile a separate classified list of Russian officials subject to visa bans. The public U.S. list includes Artem Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov, two Russian Interior Ministry officers who put Magnitsky behind bars after he accused them of stealing $230 million from the state. Two tax officials the lawyer accused of approving the fraudulent tax refunds, and several other Interior Ministry officials accused of persecuting Magnitsky, also were on the list. Absent were senior officials from Russia's President Vladimir Putin's entourage whom some human rights advocates had hoped to see sanctioned. Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement Saturday that the U.S. sanctions struck "a strong blow to bilateral relations and joint trust." The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said it had no immediate comment. Also on Russia's list are 14 Americans whom Russia says violated the rights of Russians abroad. It does not give specifics of the alleged violations, but includes several current or former federal prosecutors in the case of Viktor Bout, the Russian arms merchant sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in prison for selling weapons to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group. A federal judge, one FBI agent and four U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents also are on the list. Some of them were involved in the case of Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted for drug smuggling. "It's important that the criteria on which the Russian list was composed differ fundamentally from the Americans'. On the Russian list, including the closed part, are people actually responsible for the legalization of torture and indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantanamo, for arrests and unjust sentences for our countrymen," Ryabkov was quoted as saying.