A Yemeni Guantánamo prisoner who was cleared for release four years ago claims 17 people held at the detention facility have been waging a hunger strike and are being subjected to brutal force-feedings by medical officers.
In harrowing letters sent to his attorneys at the U.K.-based human rights charity Reprieve and obtained by Al Jazeera, Emad Hassan said the hunger strikers have been “divided into two groups.”
“First there is ‘the long term group’ which consists of [six prisoners] who have spent a long time on hunger strike,” wrote Hassan, who has been on a hunger strike since 2007 and is suing the U.S. government to end his force-feeding. “We are treated completely differently to those in the second group. The second group are the other hunger strikers who are treated awfully.”
Hassan said the nurses and corpsmen who conduct the so-called forced cell extractions and administer the feedings are using nasogastric tubes that are too big, and pushing the liquid nutritional supplement through the tube too quickly, causing the prisoners, including one who Hassan said weighs 80 pounds and has a broken arm, to vomit.