US now naming force-fed Guantanamo prisoners [View all]

[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.