Yemeni Nationals Get to Call Home From Guantanamo.

Xinhuanet: ICRC facilitates video calls for Guantanamo detainees, their families in Yemen

SANAA, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on Tuesday that it has facilitated video-teleconference calls between detainees at the U.S.-run military jail in Guantanamo Bay and their families in Yemen.

"The first calls were made ten days ago at the headquarters of the ICRC's delegation in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. The latest round of calls was made from Yemen's southern city port of Aden," the ICRC said in a press release.

"So far, four Yemeni families have used the video calls," Nourane Houas of the ICRC's Sanaa delegation said.

The video calls can last up to one hour, in which detainees for the first time in almost a decade can speak and also see their families in Yemen.

No information on whether Pfc Bradley Manning can call his family or receive phone calls from them, even from his aunt who lives in Potomac, MD., only 50 miles away by Expressway, his father in Oklahoma, or his mum and other aunt in Wales. I suspect he cannot. And I bet that compared to Manning's solitary confinement, the detainees prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay live in the lap of luxury. For one thing, they don't have to sleep in only boxer shorts under a heavy, itchy and scratchy blanket that is exactly like rough commercial carpet superglued onto an x-ray technician's protective shroud, which is pure torture. Which is why he takes sleeping pills.