Revealed: the hunger strikes of America's most secret foreign prisoners

• Protests by detainees held in secret by US in Afghanistan
• Strikes reminiscent of those at Guantánamo Bay
• Detainees say: 'The Americans did not want to talk to us'

Spencer Ackerman in New York
The Guardian, Wednesday 16 July 2014 09.19 EDT

Sometimes they stopped eating to protest unclean drinking water. Other times they stopped eating because their comrades were placed in segregated housing. Still other times they stopped eating out of dissatisfaction with their access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), their only source of connection to their families and the outside world.

Without any visibility beyond the walls of their prison, non-Afghan detainees that the US holds in almost complete secrecy in Afghanistan have engaged in hunger strikes, the Guardian has confirmed. The hunger strikes are reminiscent, on smaller scale, of those at Guantánamo Bay that seized the world's attention last year.