Force-Feeding at Guantanamo

[babylonsister]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18052.htm

Force-Feeding at Guantanamo

By BEN FOX
Associated Press Writer

07/21/07 ---- GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) 07/20/07 - 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.''

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[malaise]

1. And the world sits by and allows this to continue

Bush is beyond evil

[ThomCat]

3. We all, as US citizens, sit by and allow this to continue.

:(

We're trying, but until more people join us we just don't seem to be having much effect.

Part of our lack of influence is that government has been reshaped to exclude influence from anyone who doesn't have a lobbyist. Money is supposedly the same as speech, so only money talks.

[Turbineguy]

2. Maybe soon

they can start eating again. They may want to be witnesses at Bush and Cheney's War crimes trial.