A Yemeni inmate at Guantanamo Bay is taking on the military's practice of force-feeding hunger strike participants. Emad Abdullah Hassan, who has reportedly been on a continuous hunger strike since 2007, filed suit Tuesday against President Obama, alleging that the force-feeding he and fellow inmates had endured was "inhumane." Last year the international medical community spoke out against the force-feeding.
Represented by attorney and director of human rights group Reprieve, Clive Stafford Smith, Hassan's case constitutes the first effort to challenge force-feeding in court. As Al-Jazeera America reported:
Stafford Smith said that in a meeting at Guantánamo Bay earlier this month, Hassan recounted how staff strapped him to what he called a “torture chair” and force-fed him through large tubes, shoved into and pulled out of his nostrils before and after each feeding.
Stafford Smith said Hassan told him that the chair was often still covered in blood and feces from previous inmates who suffered from hemorrhoids and diarrhea.
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