Originally appeared at The Washington Independent.
In its latest effort to push the Bush administration into closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Amnesty International is challenging Americans to become ersatz detainees.
The human-rights organization is taking a replica of an actual Guantanamo cell around the country for what it calls the "Experience Guantanamo" project. Weighing nearly a ton, the cell is a facsimile of the one that housed David Hicks, the Australian detainee who was extradited from Guantanamo in 2007 after spending nearly five years there. The cell's dimensions -- 10 feet long, six feet wide and eight feet high -- replicate those at Guantanamo's Camp Five, the first facility in the detention complex modeled on a maximum-security Indiana prison.
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