2002 Guantánamo Hunger Strike

The 2002 Guantánamo Hunger Strike was a protest against detainees’ treatment and continued detention without trial or legal process. Mohamedou Ould Slahi later recalled taking part in September 2002, while an editorial note connects his account with reporting that places a hunger strike at Guantánamo in late September and October. The record presents the protest both as a specific episode and as part of a recurring response to conditions in detention.

Background and reported causes

The editorial note situates the strike near the end of Major General Michael E. Dunlavey’s tenure as commander of Joint Task Force 170, which oversaw intelligence operations at Guantánamo from February through October 2002. It reports that contemporary news coverage, citing an FBI document, attributed the protest to detainees’ anger over guards’ treatment and their continuing detention without trial or legal process. The available account identifies these grievances but does not give a complete list of participants or describe a formal organization behind the protest.

The protest took place as the command structure and interrogation policies at Guantánamo were changing. Major General Geoffrey D. Miller succeeded Dunlavey in November 2002, taking command of Joint Task Force Guantánamo, which encompassed all operations at the base. The Senate Armed Services Committee later documented an increase in abusive interrogation practices during October and November, including the development of the military’s first Special Interrogation Plan, for Mohammed al-Qahtani. This chronology places the hunger strike amid escalating tensions over detention and interrogation, without establishing that those later policy changes were a response to the protest.

Slahi’s participation and recollection

In his later account, Slahi identifies September 2002 as the month he personally joined a hunger strike. He says the government did not appear to be moved by that protest. His recollection is brief: it establishes his participation and his assessment of the strike’s apparent lack of effect, but does not specify its duration, the number of detainees involved, or the outcome for individual participants.

Slahi refers to the September protest retrospectively while writing about another period of hunger-striking at Guantánamo. By then, he describes detainees continuing to strike for familiar as well as newer reasons and expresses concern about the consequences of the ongoing protest. The distinction matters: his account recalls the 2002 episode while also showing that hunger strikes recurred, rather than presenting the September action as an isolated event that resolved the underlying grievances.

Corroboration and aftermath

The editor’s note compares Slahi’s recollection with news reports documenting a hunger strike in late September and October 2002. It also reports that an FBI document attributed the protest to anger about treatment by guards and detention without trial or legal process. This supplies an external chronological and contextual point of comparison, while the manuscript itself provides Slahi’s first-person confirmation that he participated. The note does not claim to reconstruct every detail of the event.

Slahi’s later assessment that the government was not impressed is consistent with the account’s emphasis on recurrence: detainees continued to strike for the same and new reasons. The material does not establish a negotiated settlement, a policy reversal, or a definitive end to the protest. Instead, the hunger strike remains a record of detainees using refusal of food to challenge conditions and legal limbo, and of Slahi’s judgment that this form of protest had not persuaded the authorities to address their situation.