US Government Ordered to Prepare Guantánamo Force-Feeding Videos for Release

[KoKo]

US Government Ordered to Prepare Guantánamo Force-Feeding Videos for release

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/05/29/us-government-ordered-prepare-guantanamo-force-feeding-videos-release

WASHINGTON - An appeal court has today ordered the Obama Administration to redact 12 hours of secret Guantánamo force-feeding footage in preparation for its public release, rejecting the Administration's argument that not one single frame should be seen by the public.
For Immediate Release

Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.

Friday, May 29, 2015

The classified videos, which show Guantánamo prisoner Abu Wa-'el Dhiab being forcibly removed from his cell and force-fed by the US military, were ordered to be released to the public by federal Judge Gladys Kessler in October 2014, following a First Amendment intervention from 16 US press organizations in the abuse case Dhiab v Obama.

The Obama Administration defied Judge Kessler's order to prepare the videos for release, complaining that the process was too much work and insisting that revealing even one frame from the videos posed a national security risk. Leaving the videos unredacted, the Administration took the case straight to D.C.'s federal Court of Appeals in an attempt to get the order overturned.

In a judgment handed down today, the Court of Appeals ruled that the Administration's refusal to comply with the lower court's order was wrong, and rejected its attempt to use the 'burdensome' task of redacting videos as a reason to circumvent the First Amendment.

The Obama Administration must now comply with Judge Kessler’s original order to redact the videotapes to address national security concerns, and submit the redacted tapes to her court for reconsideration ahead of their release.

Alka Pradhan, Reprieve US attorney for Mr Dhiab, said: "The Obama Administration's defiance of Judge Kessler's order suggests a basic contempt for both the court's authority and our First Amendment rights, which the Circuit judges recognized.

"The Administration is fighting hard because once those videotapes are redacted, they are one step close to public release - and the government is one step closer to being held accountable for their treatment of Guantanamo detainees. Yet the harder the Administration resists, the more they confirm that they have much wrongdoing to hide.

"It is time to stop running absurd arguments, and simply to do the right thing: expose and end the ongoing abuse of hunger-strikers at Guantanamo Bay.”

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/05/29/us-government-ordered-prepare-guantanamo-force-feeding-videos-release

[whatchamacallit]

1. Prepare as in edit?

[OnyxCollie]

2. Prepare as in degauss.

Like the other 92 torture tapes.

Committee against Torture
Concluding observations on the third to fifth periodic reports of United States of America
ADVANCE UNEDITED VERSION
http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents/USA/INT_CAT_COC_USA_18893_E.pdf

While noting the explanations provided by the State party concerning the conditions of detention at Guantanamo, the Committee remains concerned about the secrecy surrounding conditions of confinement, especially in Camp 7 where high-value detainees are housed. It also notes the studies received on the cumulative effect that the conditions of detention and treatment in Guantanamo have had on the psychological health of detainees. There have been nine deaths in Guantanamo during the period under review, including seven suicides. In this respect, another cause of concern is the repeated suicide attempts and recurrent mass hunger strike protests by detainees over indefinite detention and conditions of detention. In this connection, the Committee considers that force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike constitutes ill-treatment in violation of the Convention. Furthermore, it notes that detainees’ lawyers have argued in court that force feedings are allegedly administered in an unnecessarily brutal and painful manner (arts. 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16).

[Orsino]

3. Videos from what years? n/t

[KoKo]

4. The strikes were from 2005 through 2013 and are probably still going on....

The Government no longer allows information about Gitmo Forcefeedings so probably still going on so assume the videos were from 2005-2013.

From Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guant%C3%A1namo_Bay_hunger_strikes

Guantánamo Bay hunger strikes began during the middle of 2005, when detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp initiated two hunger strikes. The detainees organized several widespread hunger strikes to protest their innocence, and the conditions of their confinement.[1][2][3][4] Other captives, such as the men camp authorities asserted committed suicide in June 2006, had committed themselves to long-term hunger strikes, which were not shared by the other captives. Widespread hunger strikes recurred in 2013.


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In September 2005, the New York Times reported that as many as 200 prisoners, a third of the camp, had taken to hunger striking, and that at least 20 of them were being force-fed through nasal tubes and given fluids intravenously. Major Weir, a spokesman at the base, said "We will not let them starve themselves to the point of causing harm to themselves." [9]

On October 26, 2005, a federal judge ordered the Government to provide information about the condition of detainees to lawyers representing the hunger strikers. The Government has contested the detainees' claims of rough treatment during forced feeding. The court's decision reflects major changes from the early years of the camp's operation, when almost no information was obtainable by attorneys. The Government did not immediately announce whether it would appeal the judge's ruling.

On November 4, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated at a Pentagon news conference that he would not permit United Nations investigators to interview the striking detainees. He said the International Committee of the Red Cross would continue to have unlimited access to interview them.

On December 30, 2005, the military reported that there were 84 strikers as of Christmas Day, with 46 having joined that day. In the April 14, 2008, edition of the New Yorker magazine, Jeffrey Toobin reported that there were about ten hunger strikers at Guantanamo. The overall population had declined markedly, as many detainees had been repatriated or transferred to detention in other countries.

2013 hunger strike

A new wave of the hunger strike arose in early 2013. At its peak in July, 106 of the 166 detainees are on hunger strike, with 45 of them being force-fed. [10][11]

On December 4, 2013 US military announced that it would no longer disclose information about the hunger strikes, explaining that "The release of this information serves no operational purpose".[12]

Last disclosed figures in December showed numbers of hunger strikers rising to 15, with all being tube fed