Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Ramadan at Guantánamo: Nightly force-feedings

Here's a new twist in the U.S. military's Islamic sensitivity effort in the prison camps for suspected terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay Navy base:
Military medical staff are force-feeding a secret number of prisoners on hunger strike between dusk and dawn during the Muslim fasting holiday of Ramadan.
The prison camps spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Bradley Fagan, says it is U.S. Southern Command policy to no longer reveal the exact number of detainees being shackled by guards into restraint chairs for twice daily feedings.
Instead, he said, ``less than 10'' captives among the 176 held for years at Guantánamo were last week counted as hunger strikers.

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