mobanmarketIn the first ever challenge to the U.S. government’s ongoing and abusive force-feeding and forcible cell extraction methods used at Guantanamo Bay, an attorney for cleared Syrian detainee Abu Wa’el Dhiab said Monday that his client’s choice to hunger strike is the only way he has to protest peacefully.
“It’s a cry of humanity from a person who feels he has no choice left,” said attorney Eric Lewis. “Mr. Dhiab does not want to die, he wants to be treated like a human being.”
The statement was made during the first day in the trial Dhiab v. Obama, which is the first to assess the legality of force-feeding methods used at the infamous detention center. Dhiab, who has been cleared for release since 2009, is seeking an injunction to end the punitive way the force-feedings are being conducted and to stop the forced cell extractions which he describes as being painful and abusive.
On Tuesday, torture expert and bioethicist Dr. Stephen Miles testified on the forcible cell extractions, saying they are “a form of punishment” and “an abuse of a prisoner for the purpose of a punitive regime.” Miles said that the overall treatment of hunger strikers is a “punitive strategy to deter hunger striking.”
Despite statements from medical groups like the World Medical Association, and internationally accepted medical ethics standards like the Malta Declaration that say force-feeding prisoners constitutes a form of torture, Justice Department attorney Andrew Warden argued on Monday that the practice is not a “painful procedure” and is vital for keeping Dhiab from serious injury or death.
Lewis described the procedure before the court:
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