by Karen Miles • Essex owner-driver Steve Bryant has gone
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on hunger strike in a desperate attempt to persuade the Moroccans to release him from jail, Bryant, 42, is already suffering malnutrition and stomach ulcers, twoand-a-half years into his I0-year sentence for drugs smuggling.
Doctors say that Bryant will live a maximum of 60 days if he refuses food but accepts fluids.
"He is not in a very good nutritional state anyway and as soon as he stops eating he could get ill very quickly," says Dr Joe Beynon, from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims and Torture.
In Morocco there is no defence for drugs possession and Biyant was sentenced after being found with cannabis in his cargo of frozen squid. He has always denied any knowledge of the drugs.
He is sharing a Tangiers ratinfested cell with 42 others, being offered bread and water and using a hole in the ground for a toilet. Bernard Copeland, a Kent lorry driver who earlier
this year endured three weeks in the same cell, says: "I believe Steve to be innocent...but unless he is released soon I don't think he will make it out."
Bryant's father, Peter, says he is "flabbergasted" by the hunger strike. "He is a sensible boy," he added. "I don't think he will do anything desperate."
The beginning of the hunger strike coincides with a meeting between Harlow MEP Hugh Kerr and the Moroccan ambassador to the EU, Rachad Bouhlal to discuss Bryant's case. The ambassador is to ask the Moroccan Ministry of Justice to re-examine the case.