CUBA: A U.S. military doctor in Guantanamo Bay talks about the forced feeding of detainees during a rare tour of the detention facilities

Journalists from around the world got the chance on Tuesday (March 27) to examine select portions of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility that houses U.S. detainees. Military officials escorted reporters into a recreation yard, where inmates are allowed to spend some time outdoors; authorities also allowed camera crews inside one of the more recently constructed cell blocks. Restraints and handcuffs, used when detainees are moved from one part of the facility to another, hung on the wall outside a cell door. Navy commander Chris Winter, who oversees part of the detention operations, pointed to a marking on the ground as she described some of the camp's policies. "This is the arrow pointing to Mecca, and it's 12,793 kilometers in that direction," she said. "So they get two hours of recreation. If the detainees are compliant, then there's two (detainees) in a rec yard. If they're not compliant, there's only one in a rec yard at a time. Because it is two hours of recreation, we just keep it going continually until we're done." Inside one of the buildings, journalists were shown a medical facility that includes a surgical suite as well as a room where medical records are stored. The military doctor who spoke to reporters -- a Navy commander -- declined to give his name, but was willing describe the scale of his unit's duties. "We have about 12,000 interactions with the detainees every month," he said, "and that can be as simple as giving the detainees a medication, or as involved as admitting the detainee or even a surgery. So it really kind of varies on what's going on." In the years since the U.S. began sending detainees to Guantanamo Bay, camp authorities have been criticized by human rights groups for force-feeding inmates who attempt a hunger strike. But as the military doctor described the process, he described it as a fairly standard medical procedure. "This is the kind of tube we would use. It's lubricated and numbed, placed down the detainee's nose and into his stomach, verified its position," he said, "and then a commercially available feeding product is given that's high in calories and meets his need. It usually happens twice a day, and each feeding lasts from 15 to 45 minutes. So usually it's not the procedure itself that brings up the question of what we're doing, it's pretty much a standard medical procedure -- how we would feed someone of they couldn't use their mouth, it's more the detainee's decision to be able to be a hunger striker. From that perspective, it's a little bit more difficult for us. We've had two detainees who have been hunger strikes for greater than 500 days, and both of them have thanked the medical providers for providing this service with the hopes that they might someday go back and see their families." Also on Tuesday, human rights groups following the David Hicks case said the Australian's guilty plea should not be seen as as legitimizing the U.S. military tribunal. Hicks acknowledged providing support to a terrorist organization but denied a portion of the charge that accused him of carrying out terrorist acts. Under a long-standing diplomatic agreement, he will serve his sentence in Australia. The Australian is the first among 60 to 80 Guantanamo prisoners the United States intends to try in the new military tribunals, which Congress created after the Supreme Court struck down an earlier version that President George W. Bush authorized to try foreign captives on terrorism charges. Hicks has said he was sodomized, beaten, and subjected to forced injections while in U.S. custody, allegations the military calls untrue and nonsense.

ITN Source | March 28, 2007

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