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Guantánamo hunger-strikers endure 'water cure' torture, federal court hears
Source: The Guardian
Guantánamo hunger-strikers endure 'water cure' torture, federal court hears
Ed Pilkington in New York
theguardian.com, Tuesday 11 March 2014 17.34 GMT
Hunger-striking Guantánamo detainees are being subjected to a form of torture known as the “water cure” that was widely used in the Spanish Inquisition, lawyers are claiming in the first legal challenge to force-feeding at the military base brought before a US federal court.
The case was lodged on Tuesday in the US district court for the DC circuit that has jurisdiction over Guantánamo. It was brought on behalf of Emad Abdullah Hassan, a Yemeni who has been on hunger strike in the detention camp intermittently since 2005 and continuously since 2007.
By his lawyers’ reckoning, Hassan has been force-fed more than 5,000 times during that period, in conditions that they allege are abusive, illegal under international law and a form of torture. The motion calls for a preliminary injunction that would put an immediate halt on the practice pending full review.
The legal move is the first of its kind to be brought before the civilian courts following last month’s decision by a federal appeals court to allow such a challenge to go ahead. It paves the way for the first comprehensive hearing in the US judicial system over the legality and propriety of the military’s controversial use of force feeding at Guantánamo.
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Ed Pilkington in New York
theguardian.com, Tuesday 11 March 2014 17.34 GMT
Hunger-striking Guantánamo detainees are being subjected to a form of torture known as the “water cure” that was widely used in the Spanish Inquisition, lawyers are claiming in the first legal challenge to force-feeding at the military base brought before a US federal court.
The case was lodged on Tuesday in the US district court for the DC circuit that has jurisdiction over Guantánamo. It was brought on behalf of Emad Abdullah Hassan, a Yemeni who has been on hunger strike in the detention camp intermittently since 2005 and continuously since 2007.
By his lawyers’ reckoning, Hassan has been force-fed more than 5,000 times during that period, in conditions that they allege are abusive, illegal under international law and a form of torture. The motion calls for a preliminary injunction that would put an immediate halt on the practice pending full review.
The legal move is the first of its kind to be brought before the civilian courts following last month’s decision by a federal appeals court to allow such a challenge to go ahead. It paves the way for the first comprehensive hearing in the US judicial system over the legality and propriety of the military’s controversial use of force feeding at Guantánamo.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/guantnamo-hunger-strike-water-cure-torture
