Detainees' Protest Wins U.S. Reversal

A hunger strike yesterday by almost two-thirds of the 300 al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, called to protest two guards' removal of a makeshift turban from a captive's head, prompted a rapid about-face by U.S. military officials, who told the inmates they could indeed wear such a headdress.
The refusal to eat, along with a 45-minute demonstration in which 150 captives at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base tossed personal items out of their pens and chanted "God is great" in unison, were the first organized acts of defiance by the detainees.
Marine Gen. Michael Lehnert, who heads the Camp X-Ray prison, told the detainees over loudspeakers late yesterday that he was reversing policy and allowing them to wrap bedsheets around their heads as turbans. Such headgear is commonly used in Afghanistan and Pakistan.