Guantanamo Hunger Strikers Say Feeding Tubes Employed as Punishment

[Judi Lynn]

Guantanamo Hunger Strikers Say Feeding Tubes Employed as Punishment

By Ben Fox Associated Press Writer

Published: Oct 19, 2005

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Prisoners on hunger strike at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay say troops force-fed them with dirty feeding tubes that have been violently inserted and withdrawn as punishment, according to declassified notes released by defense attorneys Wednesday.

The repeated removal and insertion of the tubes has caused striking prisoners to vomit "substantial amounts of blood," and to experience intense pain that they have equated with torture, the lawyers reported to a federal judge after visiting their clients at the U.S. base in eastern Cuba.

Prisoners said they were taunted by troops who said the treatment was intended to persuade them to end the hunger strike that began Aug. 9, the lawyers wrote in affidavits filed as part of a lawsuit seeking greater access to inmates at the high-security jail for terror suspects.

Yousef al Shehri, 21, of Saudi Arabia, told his lawyers that guards removed a nasal feeding tube from one prisoner and reinserted it into another without cleaning it first.
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http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGB2O4M40FE.html