Lawyers for terrorism suspects being held at Guantanamo are speaking out about conditions they say are "alarming." Amid widespread protests at the U.S. military detention facility in Cuba, including a hunger strike, a group of lawyers said their clients are "coughing up blood" and "losing consciousness," claims a military spokesman disputed, saying the detainees were just trying to keep the controversial facility in the news. That spokesman said six detainees were on a hunger strike, five of those were being force-fed, no lives were in danger and the numbers were about average for such protests at the center. But one lawyer told NBC News his client recently appeared "very sick" and had lost a lot of weight. "The men are at their wit’s end," he said. "This is their eleventh year of being there, and they have no prospect for release." He also said that Gitmo's commander, Navy Rear Adm. John W. Smith, had "turned the clock back" since he took over last year, imposing harsher restrictions and tougher searches in which he said personal items were seized and Qurans inspected "in ways that constitute desecration."
