The practice of force-feeding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as a response to the mass hunger strike there has been increasingly criticized. But the military has continued to carry it out. Now, Al Jazeera has revealed in detail how the practice is takes place--and it’s not pretty.
The document states that prisoners who are force-fed are restrained by being shackled to a chair. Prisoners are also required to wear masks over their mouths to “prevent spitting and biting.” In some cases, Guantanamo prisoners are shackled for two hours. The masking and shackling of the prisoners is done to facilitate the tube that is snaked through prisoners’ nostrils until an X-ray or test dose of water confirms that the nutritional supplement reached their stomach.
Once the forced feeding process is over, a prisoner is placed in a cell that does not have running water. A guard then observes the prisoner to make sure he does not vomit up the nutritional supplement that was forced inside him. If the prisoner does vomit, he is punished. “Participation in the dry cell will be revoked and he will remain in the restraint chair for the entire observation time period during subsequent feedings,” the document reads.
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