Striking Guantanamo prisoners say water denied

MIAMI (AP) — Prisoners taking part in expanding hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay leveled new complaints about their military jailers Wednesday as a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross made a fact-finding trip to the U.S. base in Cuba.

In an emergency motion filed with a federal court in Washington, lawyers say guards have refused to provide drinking water to hunger strikers and kept camp temperature "extremely frigid," to thwart the protest. A spokesman for the detention center denied the allegations.

"The reality is that these men are slowly withering away and we as a country need to take immediate action," said Mari Newman, a human rights lawyer based in Denver, who was among those who submitted the motion.

They filed the petition after interviewing Yemeni prisoner Musaab al-Madhwani by phone Monday. He told them that guards were refusing to provide bottled water and telling prisoners to drink from tap water that inmates believe is non-potable. The lawyers say in their motion that the lack of drinkable water has "already caused some prisoners kidney, urinary and stomach problems," in addition to the health effects of the hunger strike.

Along with their motion, they submitted an affidavit from Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and retired general, who believes that the hunger strike and lack of adequate drinking water "sets them up for gastrointestinal infections and a quick demise." The doctor also said the 34-year-old al-Madhwani suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder linked to his torture while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and could be worsened by harsh conditions at Guantanamo.

The U.S. government has not filed a response to the motion. Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the prison, said prisoners are provided with bottled water and that the tap water is safe to drink.

"It's potable water. It's the same water I make my coffee with and that they make lunch with," Durand said. He also denied that there had been any change to the air conditioning settings inside the prison camps.

Accounts of the hunger strike have been in sharp conflict for weeks. Lawyers who have visited or interviewed their clients say a majority of the 166 men held at Guantanamo have joined the protest and some have lost significant weight and are at serious risk.

The military said that as of Wednesday, there were 31 men on hunger strike, up from 28 on Monday. Three men were at the hospital being treated for dehydration and 11 were being force-fed with a liquid nutrient mix to prevent dangerous weight loss.

A two-person delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross that includes a doctor is at the base to assess the situation. They started a week earlier than planned because of the hunger strike, said spokesman Simon Schorno. Their findings will be presented to the camp commander and Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees the prison, but will not be made public.

Lawyers for the prisoners say the hunger strike began on Feb. 6 as a protest of the men's indefinite confinement without charge and because of what they said was a return to harsh treatment from past years, including more intrusive searches and confiscation of personal items such as mail from their families. The military says no policies or procedures have changed at Guantanamo and the strike is an attempt to draw attention to their cause.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest say Obama's team is closely monitoring the hunger strikes, but deferred to the Pentagon for any specifics.

"The administration remains committed to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo bay," Earnest said, noting that legislation passed by Congress makes it likely that process won't be quick.

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Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler contributed from Washington.

Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay say they are being denied access to drinking water as a hunger strike grinds on and apparently grows at the U.S. base in Cuba.

An emergency court filing based on complaints from a Yemeni prisoner says guards have refused to provide bottled water to hunger strikers and told the men to drink from taps in their cells. The motion filed in Washington also alleges that the temperatures in the prison have been kept at "extremely frigid" temperatures.

A prison spokesman said the allegations are untrue. Navy Capt. Robert Durand said Wednesday that prisoners are provided with bottled water. He also says the tap water is potable at Guantanamo.

The military says 31 prisoners are on hunger strike, up from 28 on Monday.

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Canada's Suncor says "negligible" impact from waste water spill

(Reuters) - The spillage of industrial waste water at Suncor Energy Inc's main oil sands project had a limited impact on the local river, Canada's No. 1 oil producer said.

Waste water from Suncor's oil sands operation north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, escaped on Monday morning when a pipe broke after freezing.

The Athabasca River is the main source of drinking water for aboriginal and other communities downstream and has been the subject of several controversial reports on its water quality.

"Based on modeling, preliminary volume calculations and the current flow rate of the river, the process affected water may have had a short term, negligible impact on the river," company spokeswoman Sneh Seetal said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

An estimated 350 cubic meters of contaminated water was released into the river over a 10-hour period, the company said, adding that it did not contain tar-like bitumen.

Oil sands firms store contaminated water, a byproduct of stripping bitumen from the sands, in holding ponds.

Those ponds became the focus of environmental protests in 2008, when 1,600 ducks died after landing on a tailings pond operated by Syncrude Canada Ltd.

While new regulations introduced after the mass duck deaths aim to eliminate the toxic ponds, they remain controversial because of the risk of spills into the Athabasca River.

"This process affected water was mixed with treated water, prior to entering the river," Suncor said. "The ratio was approximately six parts treated water to one part process-affected water."

(Reporting by Ratul Ray Chaudhuri in Bangalore; Editing by Joseph Radford)

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Water escapes Suncor oil sands pond into Athabasca River

By Scott Haggett

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Contaminated water may have spilled into the Athabasca River from a broken pipe at Suncor Energy Inc's oil sands project in northern Alberta, sparking new fears about pollution of the river from the massive oil sands developments along its banks.

The Athabasca is the main source of drinking water for aboriginal and other communities downstream and has been the subject of several controversial reports on its water quality.

The province of Alberta's environment department said it does not yet know whether the water that spilled from a holding pond contained toxic materials. Samples from the pond are being sent for analysis and it will take at least a day before results are returned. Environment department staff have been at the project site north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, since early on Monday.

Wayne Wood, a spokesman for provincial Environment Minister Diana McQueen, said the volume of water sent into the river has not yet been determined.

"We're on the ground monitoring the situation," Wood said. "The pipe got turned off relatively fast."

Suncor, Canada's No. 1 oil producer, and other oil sands companies store contaminated water, a byproduct of stripping tar-like bitumen from the sands, in holding ponds. Those ponds became the focus of environmental protests in 2008, when 1,600 ducks died after landing on a tailings pond operated by Syncrude Canada Ltd.

While new regulations introduced after the mass deaths aim to eliminate the toxic ponds, they remain controversial because of the risk of spills into the Athabasca River.

"No one in Alberta should have to be worried about the safety of their drinking supply but that's exactly the situation we have," Mike Hudema, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, said in a statement.

Suncor said the industrial waste water from its oil sands extraction and upgrading operations escaped on Monday morning after a four-inch pipe broke after freezing, spilling the water into a partially frozen outflow pond containing treated water.

However Sneh Seetal, a spokeswoman for the company, said Suncor is not yet certain that any of the water actually flowed into the Athabasca.

"We do not know if this process-affected water was released into the river," Seetal said. "We are analyzing samples of the pond and the river as part of the investigation."

Seetal said Suncor's oil sands project was operating normally despite the spill.

Suncor shares were up 9 Canadian cents at C$30.82 at midday on Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

($1=$1.02 Canadian)

(Reporting by Scott Haggett; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Peter Galloway)

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No trauma signs on body of Canadian woman found in L.A. hotel water tank

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The autopsy of a 21-year-old Canadian student found dead in a water tank atop a historic Los Angeles hotel turned up no fatal wounds, offering no clear answers to her puzzling last days and death, coroner's officials said on Friday.

The inconclusive finding means that further tests must be conducted to determine a cause of death for Elisa Lam, who went missing from the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles under suspicious circumstances in late January.

Lam's body was found floating in one of four large water tanks on the hotel's roof on Tuesday after guests complained of low water pressure in their rooms. Health officials have issued a do-not-drink order for hotel water until it is tested.

Police have said that detectives had been hoping the autopsy would help determine if her death was the result of an accident or foul play.

"They didn't find any bullet holes, they didn't find any stab wounds to my knowledge. So then you've got to go to the next step," Los Angeles County Coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said.

He said coroner's investigators would conduct toxicology tests to establish if Lam was on any medication at the time of her death and if it was at therapeutic levels. Her organs will also be studied to determine if she suffered from any medical issues.

"You see if in fact there were any heart issues, did she die of hypothermia, did she drown," said Winter. "Were her lungs filled with water?"

Lam, a college student from Vancouver, British Columbia, was last seen by staff at the hotel on January 31 and detectives had characterized her disappearance as suspicious. She had been traveling alone but in regular contact with her family in Canada.

Police say the reason for Lam's visit to Southern California was unclear but that her final destination was expected to have been Santa Cruz in central California.

Security video taken in an elevator of the hotel and released by police last week showed her acting strangely, hiding in a corner, pushing multiple buttons and repeatedly peering around the elevator doors into a hallway.

Her body was discovered in one of the four large, cylindrical tanks supplying water to guest rooms at the art deco hotel, which was built in the 1920s and is considered a local landmark.

Local public radio KPCC reported that the hotel has had dark chapters in its long history, including murders in the '20s and '30s and a woman who leapt from a window in the 1960s.

The radio station said that two serial killers were known to have stayed there in the 1980s: Richard Ramirez, known as the "Night Stalker," and Austrian murderer Jack Unterweger.

Firefighters removed the remains by cutting through the side of the tank under a canopy that shielded them from news helicopters overhead.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Dan Grebler)

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No trauma signs on body of Canadian woman found in L.A. hotel water tank

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The autopsy of a 21-year-old Canadian student found dead in a water tank atop a historic Los Angeles hotel turned up no fatal wounds, offering no clear answers to her puzzling last days and death, coroner's officials said on Friday.

The inconclusive finding means that further tests must be conducted to determine a cause of death for Elisa Lam, who went missing from the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles under suspicious circumstances in late January.

Lam's body was found floating in one of four large water tanks on the hotel's roof on Tuesday after guests complained of low water pressure in their rooms. Health officials have issued a do-not-drink order for hotel water until it is tested.

Police have said that detectives had been hoping the autopsy would help determine if her death was the result of an accident or foul play.

"They didn't find any bullet holes, they didn't find any stab wounds to my knowledge. So then you've got to go to the next step," Los Angeles County Coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said.

He said coroner's investigators would conduct toxicology tests to establish if Lam was on any medication at the time of her death and if it was at therapeutic levels. Her organs will also be studied to determine if she suffered from any medical issues.

"You see if in fact there were any heart issues, did she die of hypothermia, did she drown," said Winter. "Were her lungs filled with water?"

Lam, a college student from Vancouver, British Columbia, was last seen by staff at the hotel on January 31 and detectives had characterized her disappearance as suspicious. She had been traveling alone but in regular contact with her family in Canada.

Police say the reason for Lam's visit to Southern California was unclear but that her final destination was expected to have been Santa Cruz in central California.

Security video taken in an elevator of the hotel and released by police last week showed her acting strangely, hiding in a corner, pushing multiple buttons and repeatedly peering around the elevator doors into a hallway.

Her body was discovered in one of the four large, cylindrical tanks supplying water to guest rooms at the art deco hotel, which was built in the 1920s and is considered a local landmark.

Local public radio KPCC reported that the hotel has had dark chapters in its long history, including murders in the '20s and '30s and a woman who leapt from a window in the 1960s.

The radio station said that two serial killers were known to have stayed there in the 1980s: Richard Ramirez, known as the "Night Stalker," and Austrian murderer Jack Unterweger.

Firefighters removed the remains by cutting through the side of the tank under a canopy that shielded them from news helicopters overhead.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Dan Grebler)

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Body found in LA hotel water tank may be missing Canadian tourist

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A body found in a water tank on the roof of a historic Los Angeles hotel has been identified as that of a 21-year-old Canadian woman who went missing in late January, police said on Wednesday.

The body, which was discovered on Tuesday morning in one of four water tanks on top of the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, has been positively identified as that of Elisa Lam by members of her family, Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Lt. Andy Nieman said.

"The coroner has confirmed that it is Elisa Lam based on some distinctive markings on her body," Neiman said. "They had confirmation from the family based on those markings."

A coroner's spokesman declined to release further information on the condition of the remains pending an autopsy that he said would likely take place on Thursday.

Lam, a 21-year-old college student from Vancouver, British Columbia, was last seen by staff at the hotel on January 31, and police detectives had characterized her disappearance as suspicious.

Police have said that the reason for Lam's visit to Southern California was unclear but that her final destination was expected to be Santa Cruz in Central California.

Security video taken in an elevator of the hotel and released by the LAPD last week showed her acting strangely, hiding in a corner, pushing multiple buttons and repeatedly peering around the elevator doors into a hallway.

The body was discovered in one of the four large, cylindrical tanks by a maintenance worker investigating guest complaints of low water pressure at the art deco hotel, which was built in 1927 and is considered a local landmark.

Firefighters removed the remains by cutting through the side of the tank under a canopy that shielded them from news helicopters overhead.

Neiman said detectives were investigating Lam's death but said it was too early to say conclusively that she had been the victim of foul play.

"There are a lot of possibilities. She may have climbed into the tank not knowing what it was and fell in or there could be something suspicious about how she got in tank," he said.

The doors and other access points that lead to the roof are secured and alarmed, Neiman said, but investigators were trying to determine if she could have climbed up on a fire escape.

He said detectives expected to learn more from the results of the autopsy but cautioned that toxicology tests typically took at least several weeks to complete.

Los Angeles police say they were contacted by Canadian authorities after her parents reported her missing there.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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