MIAMI (AP) A federal court has declined to get involved in a dispute over medical care for an obese prisoner in declining health at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Lawyers for Tarek El-Sawah were claiming that doctors at the U.S. base in Cuba were not adequately treating the Egyptian prisoner for ailments that included a lung condition and possible heart disease. They said his health was so bad it was interfering with their ability to represent him in a challenge to his confinement.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled the threshold hadn't been met for the court to intervene and that the military had addressed the medical concerns. The ruling was publicly released in recent days.
Marine Lt. Col. Sean Gleason, his military lawyer, said Tuesday that the 400-pound prisoner's health has shown improvement.
