Prisoners force-fed at Gitmo

From China Daily

New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive.

They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp’s chief doctor.

“Experience teaches us” that such symptoms must be expected “whenever nasogastric tubes are used,” says the affidavit of Captain John S Edmondson, commander of Guantanamo’s hospital. The procedure now standard practice at Guantanamo “requires that a foreign body be inserted into the body and, ideally, remain in it.” But staff always use a lubricant, and “a nasogastric tube is never inserted and moved up and down. It is inserted down into the stomach slowly and directly, and it would be impossible to insert the wrong end of the tube.” Medical personnel do not insert nasogastric tubes in a manner “intentionally designed to inflict pain.’

The London solicitors Allen and Overy, who represent some of the hunger strikers, have lodged a court action to be heard next week in California, where Edmondson is registered to practise. They are asking for an order that the state medical ethics board investigate him for “unprofessional conduct” for agreeing to the force-feeding.

Edmonson’s affidavit, in response to a lawsuit on behalf of detainees on hunger strike since last August, was obtained last week, as a Guantanamo spokesman confirmed that the number of hunger strikers has almost doubled since Christmas, to 81 of the 550 detainees. Many have been held since the camp opened four years ago this month, although they not been charged with any crime, nor been allowed to see any evidence justifying their detention.

This and other Guantanamo lawsuits now face extinction. Last week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees’ right to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of their detention and the legality of pending trials by military commission.

Merkel condemns Guantanamo

The new German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the latest leader to condemn the United States for practices at the prison. In a magazine interview days before her first visit as premier to the US, Merkel said Washington should close Guantanamo and find other ways of dealing with terror suspects.

“An institution like Guantanamo can and should not exist in the longer term,” Merkel said in an interview with the weekly magazine Der Spiegel published on Saturday. “Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners.”