The Guantnamo Hunger Strike

[Kat Kanning]

The Guantnamo Hunger Strike
Fasting prisoners force-fed twice a day as 30-inch plastic tubes are forced into their esophaguses
By H. Candace Gorman

    'Food is not enough for life. If there is no air, could you live on food alone? Freedom is just as important as food or air. Give me freedom, and I'll eat.'

Guantánamo is in the grips of a hunger strike—an age-old form of protest that marked such world events as the fight for women's suffrage and Indian and Irish independence. The U.S. military's response to the hunger strike is not surprising: punitive force-feeding, a dangerous and painful approach. In March I was treated to a grisly demonstration of this procedure at a conference of Guantánamo attorneys in London and Oxford.

We also met with members of the British Parliament and ambassadors from our clients' countries of origin (as well as ambassadors of countries that might be willing to offer asylum to former prisoners). But one of the main topics of the discussion was the current hunger strike, which is only now being discussed in the press.

The hunger strike coincided with the fifth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, as well as the opening in late December 2006 of the maximum security complex, Camp 6, constructed by Kellogg, Brown and Root, then a subsidiary of Halliburton. My Libyan client, Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi, has been moved to Camp 6.

The exact number participating in the hunger strike is unclear because the military will not talk about it, but based on accounts emerging from the base through attorney-client notes as they get "cleared" by the military, we know the number is large. According to my Algerian client, Abdul Razak Ali, more than 46 prisoners are on hunger strike, but he is only in one section of the base, so presumably there are many more. The men participating in the hunger strike are force-fed "Ensure" twice a day. Each man is strapped to a chair (the model I saw was made of wood). A plastic tube approximately 30 inches in length is forced down his esophagus. (Occasionally it runs down the trachea into the lungs, maybe by accident.) This is what your country is doing—in your name.

One of the detainees subjected to this is Sami Al-Haj, the Al-Jazeera cameraman who has been held without trial for nearly 2,000 days. He described the force-feeding to his attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, in early March. According to Stafford Smith, Al-Haj is force-fed each day at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. This coincides with what Abdul Razak Ali told me about the men on strike who are taken from his camp every day. They are taken to several different buildings; Al-Haj is brought to the now-deserted mental health block.

In this building there are two cells with force-feeding chairs. Each day Al-Haj is strapped tightly into the chair with 13 straps. The guards begin with the feet straps, then his waist. Then they fasten one wrist at a time. There is one band around each shin, one on each wrist, one on each elbow, one strap that comes down over each shoulder and one around the waist. Three straps are used to immobilize his head. The ankles are shackled to an eye on the chair, and then they pull a mask over his mouth.

Every morning they insert the tube through Al-Haj's left nostril and every afternoon, his right—presumably to avoid excessive pressure on a single nostril. According to Al-Haj, the pain of putting the tube up his nose is considerable; the tube's diameter is 12 millimeters, (three times the clinically recommended width of a nasogastric tube) and he gags when it passes through his throat. As it descends into his body, the attendants blow air into the tube to hear where it is, and then they put a stethoscope near his heart to listen. Most days he suffers in silence until tears stream down his cheeks. Three times they have inserted the tube the wrong way, so it went into his lungs. When they think that has happened they check by putting water into the tube, which makes him choke. Al-Haj says that never once have the hospital personnel apologized when the tube entered his lung.

After force-feeding Al-Haj, they hold him in the chair for an hour to make sure he doesn't throw up. If he does, which Sami says happens frequently, he is given no clean clothes, and he cannot clean himself after returning to his cell because the water is turned off (so that the guards can check whether he has thrown up in the toilet).

At a press conference held before our meeting at Parliament, we watched a live demonstration of the force-feeding process. A brave volunteer underwent the grueling process, though the jumbo-sized feeding tube was not used. Everyone present looked away as this man was strapped down and the tube was inserted down his nostril.

Why does Al-Haj continue to endure this torture? He said, "Food is not enough for life. If there is no air, could you live on food alone? Freedom is just as important as food or air. Give me freedom, and I'll eat. Every day they ask me, when will I eat. Every day, I say, 'Tomorrow.' Every day. It's what Scarlett O'Hara says at the end of Gone With the Wind: 'Tomorrow is another day.' "

[powerchuter]

The Guantnamo Hunger Strike
Fasting prisoners force-fed twice a day as 30-inch plastic tubes are forced into their esophaguses
By H. Candace Gorman

    'Food is not enough for life. If there is no air, could you live on food alone? Freedom is just as important as food or air. Give me freedom, and I'll eat.'

Guantánamo is in the grips of a hunger strike—an age-old form of protest that marked such world events as the fight for women's suffrage and Indian and Irish independence. The U.S. military's response to the hunger strike is not surprising: punitive force-feeding, a dangerous and painful approach. In March I was treated to a grisly demonstration of this procedure at a conference of Guantánamo attorneys in London and Oxford.

We also met with members of the British Parliament and ambassadors from our clients' countries of origin (as well as ambassadors of countries that might be willing to offer asylum to former prisoners). But one of the main topics of the discussion was the current hunger strike, which is only now being discussed in the press.

The hunger strike coincided with the fifth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, as well as the opening in late December 2006 of the maximum security complex, Camp 6, constructed by Kellogg, Brown and Root, then a subsidiary of Halliburton. My Libyan client, Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi, has been moved to Camp 6.

The exact number participating in the hunger strike is unclear because the military will not talk about it, but based on accounts emerging from the base through attorney-client notes as they get "cleared" by the military, we know the number is large. According to my Algerian client, Abdul Razak Ali, more than 46 prisoners are on hunger strike, but he is only in one section of the base, so presumably there are many more. The men participating in the hunger strike are force-fed "Ensure" twice a day. Each man is strapped to a chair (the model I saw was made of wood). A plastic tube approximately 30 inches in length is forced down his esophagus. (Occasionally it runs down the trachea into the lungs, maybe by accident.) This is what your country is doing—in your name.

One of the detainees subjected to this is Sami Al-Haj, the Al-Jazeera cameraman who has been held without trial for nearly 2,000 days. He described the force-feeding to his attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, in early March. According to Stafford Smith, Al-Haj is force-fed each day at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. This coincides with what Abdul Razak Ali told me about the men on strike who are taken from his camp every day. They are taken to several different buildings; Al-Haj is brought to the now-deserted mental health block.

In this building there are two cells with force-feeding chairs. Each day Al-Haj is strapped tightly into the chair with 13 straps. The guards begin with the feet straps, then his waist. Then they fasten one wrist at a time. There is one band around each shin, one on each wrist, one on each elbow, one strap that comes down over each shoulder and one around the waist. Three straps are used to immobilize his head. The ankles are shackled to an eye on the chair, and then they pull a mask over his mouth.

Every morning they insert the tube through Al-Haj's left nostril and every afternoon, his right—presumably to avoid excessive pressure on a single nostril. According to Al-Haj, the pain of putting the tube up his nose is considerable; the tube's diameter is 12 millimeters, (three times the clinically recommended width of a nasogastric tube) and he gags when it passes through his throat. As it descends into his body, the attendants blow air into the tube to hear where it is, and then they put a stethoscope near his heart to listen. Most days he suffers in silence until tears stream down his cheeks. Three times they have inserted the tube the wrong way, so it went into his lungs. When they think that has happened they check by putting water into the tube, which makes him choke. Al-Haj says that never once have the hospital personnel apologized when the tube entered his lung.

After force-feeding Al-Haj, they hold him in the chair for an hour to make sure he doesn't throw up. If he does, which Sami says happens frequently, he is given no clean clothes, and he cannot clean himself after returning to his cell because the water is turned off (so that the guards can check whether he has thrown up in the toilet).

At a press conference held before our meeting at Parliament, we watched a live demonstration of the force-feeding process. A brave volunteer underwent the grueling process, though the jumbo-sized feeding tube was not used. Everyone present looked away as this man was strapped down and the tube was inserted down his nostril.

Why does Al-Haj continue to endure this torture? He said, "Food is not enough for life. If there is no air, could you live on food alone? Freedom is just as important as food or air. Give me freedom, and I'll eat. Every day they ask me, when will I eat. Every day, I say, 'Tomorrow.' Every day. It's what Scarlett O'Hara says at the end of Gone With the Wind: 'Tomorrow is another day.' "

Man this makes me so angry!
Forcing things down their throats...

and here you thought these things only happened in the movies...

and on "24"....

[Kat Kanning]

Let me die pleads Juma

MANAMA

A BAHRAINI prisoner at Guantanamo Bay has begged to be allowed to kill himself in a harrowing letter to his lawyer.

Juma Al Dossary says inmates are being tortured physically and psychologically on a regular basis and their life is no longer worth living.

He said detainees are also unable to complain to anyone inside the prison camp - alleging it was those in charge of the facility who are abusing them.

"We die here hundred times a day and I swear to God if I have the opportunity, I would end the life of misery, torture and terror I live at the hands of those people," writes Al Dossary.

He also suggests he was planning what would be his 14th suicide attempt, but lost whatever it was that he was planning to kill himself with.

"As I told you, I lost the thing I was hiding to end my worthless life with," he tells his lawyers.

"I want to put an end to this psychological and physical torture by any means. I am looking for an end to my life, for an opportunity that has not come yet."

The detainee, who has been held in Guantanamo Bay for more than five years without charge or trial, made the disturbing comments in a letter sent to legal team head Joshua Colangelo-Bryan and written in Arabic on April 18. It was obtained by the GDN yesterday.

The detainee is being held at the prison camp's mental health unit and reportedly suffers from a variety of health problems.

Ac-cording to the US military, he has al-ready tried to kill himself 13 times.

"We are subject here in the psychotherapy unit to horrible and awful torture that I cannot describe," the Bahraini writes.

"These days are more terrible than those days of Camp X-ray, because we are being tortured physically and psychologically on regular basis and we do not find anyone who can hear our complaints."

Al Dossary says inmates are being treated worse than slaves and suggests animals enjoy a better quality of life.

"In fact, we are being tortured and our condition is much worse than those in solitary cells," he wrote.

"We are deprived of everything, as if we are being punished for being in that condition and in that block. Those who are being openly punished in other places have more personal stuff than we do. I cannot describe the degree of our tragedy or the graveness of our misfortune."

Al Dossary, who signed his letter The Sufferer, claims he can often hear the screams of other inmates being tortured and is constantly fatigued because of the Immediate Reaction Force soldiers storming his and other prisoner's cells in a bid to terrify them.

"We are facing here the most horrible type of oppression and physical torture, rather terrorising treatment," he says.

"I am a human being, but a dead one without rights, dignity, humanity or identity.

"It is easy for you to say be patient. But for me, I own nothing, no food, no clothes, no time to sleep - nothing at all.

"At any moment, they take my clothes off and leave me naked. I am no longer a human being, not even an animal because those creatures have rights.

"I know that the slavery era has gone and finished, but I'm even less than a slave. Slaves had clothes, food and basic rights, but I have nothing."

The other Bahraini being held at Guantanamo Bay is Isa Al Murbati, who is being kept in Camp Six and has also been held for more than five years without charge or trial.

Three other Bahrainis, Adel Kamel Hajee, Abdulla Al Nuaimi and Shaikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, were released from Guantanamo in November 2005, while Salah Al Blooshi was released from custody and returned to Bahrain in October last year.

[David]

When you have no other way to fight back, the hunger strike is the only way.  In fact, it is the most effective.  Because they, the jailers know, it is hard to cover up a missing inmate, so they can't hide the dead body.  So they don't (usually) let them die.  And this process, usually breaks through the censorship, or so it would seem. 

[Kat Kanning]

You have to acknowledge that's it's pretty bad when someone demonstrates that they'd rather be dead than remain in there.

[Kat Kanning]

Guantanamo Hunger Strikers Stay Defiant

Jul 20, 8:46 PM (ET)

By BEN FOX

(AP) A Guantanamo detainee sits alone inside a fenced area during his daily outside period, at...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - Twice a day at the U.S. military prison here, Abdul Rahman Shalabi and Zaid Salim Zuhair Ahmed are strapped down in padded restraint chairs and flexible yellow tubes are inserted through their noses and throats. Milky nutritional supplements, mixed with water and olive oil to add calories and ease constipation, pour into their stomachs.

Shalabi, 32, an accused al-Qaida militant who was among the first prisoners taken to Guantanamo, and Ahmed, about 34, have refused to eat for almost two years to protest their conditions and open-ended confinement. In recent months, the number of hunger strikers has grown to two dozen, and the military is using force-feeding to keep them from starving.

An Associated Press investigation reveals the most complete picture yet of a test of wills that's taking place out of public view and shows no sign of ending, despite international outrage.

The restraint chair was a practice borrowed from U.S. civilian prisons in January 2006. Prisoners are strapped down and monitored to prevent vomiting until the supplements are digested.

The British human rights group Reprieve labeled the process "intentionally brutal" and Shalabi, according to his lawyer's notes, said it is painful, "something you can't imagine. For two years, me and Ahmed have been treated like animals."

The government says force-feeding detainees in the restraint chair was not meant to break the hunger strikes, but it had that effect. A mass protest that began in August 2005 and reached a peak of 131 detainees dwindled at one point to just two - Shalabi and Ahmed. In recent months, though, the number has grown again.

The military won't identify strikers, citing privacy rules and a desire to keep detainees from becoming martyrs.

But the AP was able to identify Shalabi and Ahmed, both Saudi Arabians, through interviews with several detainee lawyers and detailed military charts, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, tracking the weights of each detainee.

Shalabi told his lawyer that other strikers include Sami al-Hajj, a Sudanese cameraman for Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic-language TV station; Shaker Aamer, a Saudi who has acted as a camp leader; and Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, a U.S.-educated Saudi engineer who told his captors he was proud to fight the U.S. and would consider it an honor to be given a life sentence.

"I don't quite see what they have gained from it," detention center commander Navy Rear Adm. Mark Buzby told the AP. "They are alive and healthy and we are going to keep them that way as long as they are here."

The military counted 24 men on hunger strike this week, including 23 receiving "enteral feeding" through tubes. It begins daily monitoring and considers force-feeding any detainee who misses nine consecutive meals. All are now at 100 percent of their ideal body weight because of the tube feedings, the military says.

"We never allow them to become seriously, medically compromised," said Navy Capt. Ronald Sollock, a doctor who commanded the detention center hospital from January 2006 until this month.

Guantanamo officials who deal directly with the strikers - and cannot be identified under military rules - cast doubt on their commitment. They say some were coerced by other detainees to stop eating and others eat McDonald's Happy Meals or Subway sandwiches provided by interrogators when they think other detainees won't find out.

And while detainees have complained of wounds from the repeated insertion and removal of the tubes, the military says it uses lubricants and local anesthetics to ease the pain.

Health experts unaffiliated with the military say there are no nutritional consequences from long-term tube feeding, that with proper care it can be done safely. Psychological and physical harm, however, are a real possibility.

Dr. Ronald Kleinman, chief of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, says there is a potential for "psychological consequences when this is done coercively," as well as "physical harm from repeatedly inserting a tube through the nose or leaving it in place inappropriately."

The previous Guantanamo commander, Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, underwent the process "just so he could say it was no big deal," Buzby said. He also says long-term strikers have complained at times when their feeding is delayed.

Prisoners have sporadically refused to eat at Guantanamo since shortly after they began arriving in January 2002. Detainees also show defiance by banging on their cell doors in concert for extended periods or hurling their bodily excretions at guards.

The mass hunger strike that began in August 2005, however, was something different. The prisoners compared themselves to the 10 Irish Republican Army hunger strikers who starved themselves to death in Britain's Maze prison in 1981 in hopes of winning status as political prisoners.

"Nobody should believe for one moment that my brothers here have less courage," Ethiopian detainee Binyam Mohammed warned in a statement released through his lawyer.

The Guantanamo hunger strikers were tube-fed, but many intentionally vomited the nutritional supplements and steadily lost weight.

By that December, at least 19 of 29 remaining strikers were significantly malnourished and at "great risk" of complications such as infection, permanent organ damage and injuries from weakened bones and muscles, according to an affidavit filed by a former hospital commander, Navy Capt. Stephen Hooker, in support of the military's response.

In early 2006, the military started using the restraint chairs, which strap down their arms and legs, to prevent detainees from resisting feeding efforts or making themselves vomit.

Among opponents were the International Committee of the Red Cross and Physicians for Human Rights. "We believe the will of the detainee must be respected," Red Cross spokesman Simon Schorno said.

The number of strikers has increased again recently, lawyers say, in protest of their increased isolation in Camp 6, the newest section of Guantanamo, where detainees spend most of the day alone in solid-wall cells. About 360 men are still being held at Guantanamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

The U.S. considers refusing to eat to be a disciplinary infraction and confiscates so-called comfort items such as mattresses and long underwear from their air-conditioned cells. Detainees must sleep on thin mats, can't get books or magazines other than the Quran and can have paper and pens to write letters for only an hour or so a day.

Shalabi and Ahmed have regained their weight since their captors began strapping them down. The records show Shalabi's weight dropped from 124 pounds to 106 pounds in January 2006, when the use of the restraint chair began. His lawyer says he now weighs about 155. Ahmed dropped from 149 pounds to 108 in December 2005 and was 143 pounds at the end of last year. His current weight is unknown.

The military doesn't allow detainee interviews, and Ahmed has no known lawyer. But Shalabi told New York attorney Julia Tarver Mason that after more than five years in detention without being charged, the strikers see their protest as a grueling but necessary struggle against indefinite confinement.

"I think he just feels hopeless that the law doesn't apply to him," Mason said.

A slight man with a short beard, Shalabi appeared in better health in June than when they previously met in October 2005, when he was "gaunt and emaciated," Mason said. But the strike has taken its toll. "He looks very old for someone his age. ... If I saw him anywhere else," the lawyer said, "I would think he's a man in his 50s."

The Bush administration maintains the detainees have no right to challenge their confinement in U.S. courts. They may, however, have some reason to feel less hopeless now: Reversing an earlier decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the question, and a decision is expected next year.

http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fapnews.myway.com%2Farticle%2F20070721%2FD8QGLFMO0.html

[penguins4me]

Sure, they were all just normal, innocent businessmen, kidnapped by the Eeeeevil Empire.

As I recall, the majority of the gitmo guys were captured in actual combat with the US military and/or its allies. The reason given for pussyfooting around and not treating them as full-fledge POWs is that the sorta-POWs were using guerilla tactics, not wearing uniforms, and otherwise being annoying. Hence the phrase "enemy combatants" - still guys shooting at our guys.

Most of the "enemy combatants", again as I recall, were originally fighting in Afghanistan.

AT LEAST 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees have been killed or recaptured after taking up arms against allied forces following their release.

    They have been discovered mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but not in Iraq, a US Defence Department spokesman told The Age yesterday.

    Commander Jeffrey Gordon said the detainees had, while in custody, falsely claimed to be farmers, truck drivers, cooks, small-arms merchants, low-level combatants or had offered other false explanations for being in Afghanistan.

    "We are aware of dozens of cases where they have returned to militant activities, participated in anti-US propaganda or engaged in other activities," said Commander Gordon.

To explicitly clarify my point, these "enemy combatants" are from the exact same group of people who have committed actual, real torture - slicing up the victims' genitals, cutting open their abdomens and disembowling the victims while the victim watches, etc. - which is not even close to the same level of so-called "torture" the US gov't is being accused of practicing on its prisoners. "Having to read a newsletter full of 'crap,' being forced to use unscented deodorant and shampoo and having to play sports with a ball that would not bounce" and even things like waterboarding are not comparable to actual, medieval-style torture being practiced by members of that very same group of "enemy combatants".

Does that excuse the US' wrongdoings? No. But it does NOT make them equivalent to the mujahideen.

[Kat Kanning]

Ah, that's why they just let so many of them go, after years of torturing them.  I understand now.

[penguins4me]

Frankly, I don't think there's any logic left in the US gov't. It seems to me that politicians make things happen on a whim because they think it will help their poll numbers. I'm miffed because I feel that if the gitmo guys were actually captured in combat, they should have been treated as POWs and nothing less.

That said, using a feeding tube on someone who is starving themselves is not torture. I just had a discussion along these same lines with a close friend who was expressing repulsion over the "torture" US prisoners sentenced to death by lethal injection are put through, specifically regarding how doctors can't administer the injections and the untrained personnel often miss the blood vessels, necessitating multiple needle jabs. I hate needles as well, so I can understand the initial emotional factor... (and the physical, for that matter, having been stabbed over a dozen times by a nurse while I was having a joint put back into place in an ER) but as I'd stated above, such uncomfortables do not equate to having all your fingers cut to the bone, to having knife blades stuffed up your anus, to having your head hacked off (not guillotine-cut, but hack-hack-hack-hack cut) - one level is merely distasteful, the other is downright barbaric.

Then there's the matter of the goal of one set being keeping someone alive, and the other of inflicting maximum pain possible before death. I believe the term is 'moral equivalency', and I aim to show that it is not applicable in this case.