Controversial Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle has gone on hunger strike in solidarity with a Britain-based prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, writes Judith Duffy.
Boyle is one of a number of people undertaking a week-long fast to raise publicity for the plight of Shaker Aamer, who has been held at the detention camp since 2002.
In his online blog, United States-based British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, the founder and director of legal action charity Reprieve, wrote that he had spent the past week with no food, with Boyle taking over from him.
He said the comedian's high profile would be able to highlight what was happening at Guantanamo.
Stafford Smith said: "One purpose of these symbolic actions is to provoke debate, to press President Obama to fulfill his post-election promise [to close Guantanamo Bay], and I suspect Frankie is better at doing that than I am."
He said that the actress Julie Christie has also just volunteered to take part, and he added: "We live in a celebrity world, and there is nothing wrong with that so long as celebrities use their notoriety for a good purpose."
Aamer, a father of four, is a legal, permanent resident of the UK and is married to a British national. He has long been cleared for release by the US and has never been charged with a crime in the country, according to Reprieve.
Boyle has been updating his progress to his 1.5 million followers on Twitter.
A message yesterday said: "OK, so day 4 of not eating feels a bit f**king grim."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article