US now naming force-fed Guantanamo prisoners

[Paul E Ester]

Source: ap

The U.S. government has begun notifying lawyers of Guantanamo Bay prisoners if the men they represent are being force-fed to prevent them from starving to death in a hunger strike that has dragged on for more than two months, though its extent remains in dispute.

Cori Crider, a lawyer for Yemeni prisoner Samir Mukbel, said she received notification from the Department of Justice late last week that her client was being force-fed and was permitted to speak with him by phone Monday to confirm the report.
Crider, who works for the British legal rights group Reprieve, said Mukbel told her he joined the hunger strike in February, has lost about 30 pounds and at one point fainted and had to be hospitalized at the prison on the U.S. base in Cuba. He described the feeding process as painful.

"Some people have gone through this a lot but he said he had never felt anything like it in his life," she said shortly after the call.

The U.S. military generally does not discuss specific prisoners in part because doing so might violate provisions of the Geneva Conventions that prohibit making a public spectacle of prisoners, said Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the detention center. As part of that policy, officials have not confirmed the identities of individual hunger strikers, though there has at times been indirect confirmation in court papers as part of the process through which the men challenge their confinement in federal court.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/us-now-naming-force-fed-guantanamo-prisoners-193633133.html

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There were 42 prisoners listed as hunger strikers Monday under the military guidelines, which include missing nine consecutive meals. Of that group, 11 were being force fed, Durand said.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. As noted on an ACLU blog:

"the U.N. Commission on Human Rights concluded, in a detailed report about Guantánamo in February 2006 (PDF), following an 18-month investigation, that “[t]he excessive violence used in many cases during transportation ... and forced-feeding of detainees on hunger strike must be assessed as amounting to torture,” and it is clear that nothing has changed in the three years since the report was published. "

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/torture-guantanamo-force-feeding-hunger-strikers

[ladjf]

2. Let those people go. Close the prison. nt

[Comrade_McKenzie]

3. HOW APPALLING THAT OBAMA AND HIS THUGS...

Would try to prevent these prisoners from starving to death.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

4. More here at DU: "Is Obama condoning torture by allowing force-feeding at Gitmo?"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5017717

The NYT reported in 2006 the so-called "industry standard equipment" being employed is a restraint chair and the "procedures" include stuffing a hose down the hunger striker's nose. Fawzi al-Odeh, a Kuwaiti detainee, according to his lawyer "said he heard 'screams of pain' from a hunger striker in the next cell as a thick tube was inserted into his nose.

"Another lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, said one of his three Bahraini clients, Jum'ah al-Dossari, told him about 10 days ago that more than half of a group of 34 long-term hunger strikers had abandoned their protest after being strapped in restraint chairs and having their feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some bled or fainted . . .

'He said that during these force feedings too much food was given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves,' Mr. Colangelo-Bryan added."

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[xtraxritical]

6. So give them what they want, death.

Problem solved.

[pam4water]

8. What is wrong with you. Half of the are innocent people sold for the bounty the US was paying for

anyone named as being Al-Qaeda.

[xtraxritical]

10. Says you, so what. All of the 911 victims were innocent.

[surrealAmerican]

11. Are you seriously suggesting that ...

... because terrorists killed innocent people, that it's acceptable for our government to kill innocent people?


Shouldn't our government be held to a higher standard than a criminal?

[xtraxritical]

14. These guys are not wanted back by their country's of origin and no one else

will take them. Military intelligence has found them to be the most incorrigible and dangerous. They are not criminals they are war prisoners that declared war on the United States, "innocent people" I think not dearie. I'll trust the professionals.

[surrealAmerican]

16. There are agreed upon standards for the treatment of war prisoners.

Those standards do not include execution. Nor do they allow torture.

You are the one who suggested that innocence didn't matter. Information gained through torture is known to be unreliable - and that's exactly the sort of "evidence" that military intelligence has based their findings on about these prisoners. We don't know if they're guilty or not, and we probably never will.

[markpkessinger]

12. If we EVER get to the place of accepting that as justifiction . . .

. . . for the torture and imprisonment without charge of innocent persons, then we are no better than the terrorists!

[pam4water]

17. Apparently you have no moral core. Here put this in the hole were you core should be. "Do unto

"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."

If you would really let yourself be killed in a revenge attract then go check yourself in a mental hospital.

[libodem]

13. It would be more

Merciful. I know I would want to die if I were to be held indefinitely, without charges.

Many of these men were sold by their enemies for money. Many of them were innocent. The treatment of them amounts to torture in many cases.

Did you ever read the story of the US soldier beaten at gitmo? (google it if you don't believe me) They asked for a volunteer, suited him up in an orange jumpsuit and hood and let him loose in a room with some guards. He was nearly beaten to death. He still has seizures from the tramatic brain injury.

It is a fucking Hell hole.

[sikofit3]

7. Sickening!

Not in my name dammit! WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is like the suicide nets around the factories in China..... you can't even control your death or in desperation escape such horrid conditions by wanting to die. NO you must live and be tortured some more! I can't take it.

[Sunlei]

9. "might violate provisions of the Geneva Conventions" WTF! I know Obama stopped the waterboarding....

...one of the first things he did when elected.

Cheney-Bush stopped following the Geneva convention thousands and thousands of tortures, naked dog collared prisoners, naked people in dog cages, cattle prod shocked people 1,000s of waterboardings ago.

Send those people home..its to late to make trials and crap like that. WT heck good are trials NOW years later.?? They have been punished enough and I don't think most Americans want to pay for that kind of Military or Federal Gov.

Send those people home and if they are afraid to go 'home' or have no home..set them up somewhere else.

[OhioChick]

15. I thought that Guantanamo was supposed to be closed a while back?

Perhaps I've been out of the loop.

[cstanleytech]

18. Try this link then

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/22/107255/how-congress-helped-thwart-obamas.html

As you can see there are really only two solutions, kick more republicans out of office (and for good this time not just a few years) or give the president the power to ignore congress and of the two options I lean more towards option one because the next president could be a republican one.

[OhioChick]

19. Thanks for the info w/link n/t

[cstanleytech]

20. You are most welcome. Hopefully others will also read and learn from it as well though

I am sure there will probably be some holdouts who would rather dwell in ignorance.

[Comrade Grumpy]

21. Headlines like that make me so proud to be an American.