US judge’s ruling on force-feeding of prisoner further exposes torture methods at Guantanamo Bay
Nick Barrickman ■ A federal judge last week ordered a temporary halt to US authorities’ practice of force-feeding a detainee at the Guantanamo military base in Cuba. The order comes on the heels of a large-scale hunger strike by the base’s detainees in 2013, protesting the conditions of their ongoing detainment. According to an injunction ordered by judge Gladys Kessler of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia, the “force-feedings and forcible cell extractions” of Guantanamo prisoner Mohammed Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian, must stop until the US government meets with the court on Wednesday for a status conference on the treatment of the detainee. The judge also called for the preservation of all video evidence of Dhiab’s forced feeding from April 2013 until February 2014, which authorities will be asked to present to the court at a later date.