Guantanamo man tells of 'torture'

[DoYouEverWonder]

3 March 2006

A Kuwaiti man being held at Guantanamo Bay has told the BBC in a rare interview that the force-feeding of hunger strikers amounts to torture.

Fawzi al-Odah, who has been held at the base since 2002, said hunger strikers were strapped to a chair and force-fed through a tube three times a day.

His remarks came as a US judge prepared to hear a call to ban force-feeding.

A senior official in the US state department denied the administration was using torture in Guantanamo Bay.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4769604.stm


Once again the US denies what they've already admitted.

[HuffleClaw]

1. the usual tiresome denials and excuses

and you can be damn sure they are none to gentle in this force feeding either, their idea of 'encouraging' them to stop their hunger strike. and there's this: "US official Colleen Graffey said all detainees were afforded regular status reviews and offered the opportunity to renounce violence." just what the hell does that even mean? 'offered the opportunity to renounce violence"? more meaningless rhetoric from barbaric jailers. what is meant is they are offered 'confessions' to sign regularly.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. I think that may have been what the interviewer called

an "Alice in Wonderland" statement. She claimed that if the detainees renounced violence, they might be let go - and he replied that they renounce violence all the time, since they say they've never been in favour of it (this Kuwaiti said how grateful he had been to the USA for kicking Saddam out, and how Bush's regime was shaming the American tradition). Her reply was that they've found an 'al Qaeda handbook' that says "if you're captured, deny being in al Qaeda", so it seems they don't trust the word of anyone who denies they've been in al Qaeda. The similarities to the Salem witchhunts is unnerving.

[katinmn]

2. Gitmo is another reason this country must rise up against BushCo

Four years, 450 prisoners, most of them not charged with anything, many names not even released. Experimental torture.

Not allowing these prisoners even this last ditch effort at dignity is beyond inhumane.

I hope I see the day that Bush & Company answer for each and every one of their crimes.

[crowcalling]

3. Similar thread here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=554792&mesg_id=554792

Note the story on force feeding from the Bush Administration's Council on Bio-Ethics.
REALLY!!!

[Jack Rabbit]

4. Closing down Gitmo is not the issue

Closing the Guantánamo prison camp would accomplish little if the Bush junta continues to violate international humanitarian law at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other torture chambers in the offshore network of gulags set up by this regime.

The important question is whether or not Bush and the neoconservatives are going to respect international law and conventions which categorically prohibit torture and other forms of degrading and inhuman punishment or treatment of detainees. These conventions also prohibit the practice that Bush and his White House lawyers call "extraordinary rendition".

Time and time again, the indication from those in the Bush junta is that they have no intention of respecting international conventions. They have denied that what happens in Guantánamo and other detention centers is torture, at least not as long as they do it. They have relieved from command those reluctant to practice "aggressive" interrogation techniques. They have asserted that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to "terrorists." They assert the right to put to death any detainee found guilty in a procedure designed to look only superficially like a trial. They resist the oversight of Congress and any international body. They even assert that they are above any law, national or international.

The grand inquisitors in the Bush regime should be given another international body to resist: an international tribunal for war crimes in Iraq and crimes against humanity arising out of the so-called war on terror. While it is unlikely that international arrest warrants against Bush and his aides would have any direct effect in this country, the action could be supported by boycotts and divestment campaigns against US transnational corporations, especially those which have profited from the invasion of Iraq, and by diplomatic sanctions against the criminal suspects. Let's see if Mr. Bush and his aides can plan another imperialist misadventure like Iraq if at every foreign airport officers from Interpol are waiting to greet them as they get off the plane.