The US Military & Guantanamo: Force-Feeding Prisoners During Ramadan (Rosenberg)

Carol Rosenberg writes for The Miami Herald:

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.

"Detainees who are fasting get their meals before dawn,'' he said Wednesday, disclosing only the hours of that day's feeding "in observance of the Ramadan schedule'' --- before 5:26 a.m. and after 7:28 p.m.

"Please note,'' he added, "that not all hunger strikers are enteral feeders.''

As prison camps spokesman, Fagan has clamped a new level of secrecy on the Pentagon's practice of pumping protein shakes into the stomachs of captives who refuse to eat meals catered to the prison camps by Defense Department contractors.

A fact sheet dated June 28 on the Guantánamo website disclosed some other figures: "Each detainee receives 5,500-6,000 calories per day and has six menus to choose from. Feast meals are served two times per week.''

It put the price of meeting the captives ``cultural and dietary needs'' at approximately $3 million a year....

To demystify [force feeding] a bit, Navy prison camp hospital workers some years back created a display of different flavored supplements and let visiting reporters handle a sample yellow rubber feeding tube.

By last summer, staff were pointing to Butter Pecan flavored Ensure as popular with the chair-shackled captives. Flavor made no difference going down, one nurse explained, but a captive could taste it if he burped later.

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