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.''
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-conditn 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.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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