A hunger-striking prisoner in Guantánamo Bay whose force-feeding prompted a highly critical ruling from a federal judge accusing the Department of Defense of “intransigence” and of inflicting possibly “unnecessary pain” has complained that he is once again being subjected to harsh treatment amounting to torture.



Abu Wa'el Dhiab said that in the past 10 days he had suffered especially harsh treatment from what he called “the rough team” of guards brought from another military camp to give him enteral feeding. He said the team “takes you very roughly, with torture”.

Dhiab’s complaint was recorded in a declaration released on Tuesday by Jon Eisenberg, part of the human rights group Reprieve’s legal team representing the Syrian detainee. The lawyer based the declaration on a phone conversation with the prisoner on Sunday, though Eisenberg stated that he had been unable to confirm every element of the account.

On 16 May, in the first intervention into the Guantánamo hunger strike by a judge, Gladys Kessler of the US district court for the District of Columbia, imposed a temporary halt to Dhiab’s force-feeding. A week later, she allowed the process to recommence, but only because she said the prisoner was at risk of dying as a result of his refusal to eat.

In her order, Kessler said she had faced an “anguishing Hobson’s choice” – she could impose another restraining order on the military that would further prevent enteral feeding at the risk of the prisoner dying, or she could allow force-feeding to start up again “at the possible cost of great pain and suffering”. She added pointedly: “Thanks to the intransigence of the Department of Defense, Mr Dhiab may well suffer unnecessary pain from certain enteral feeding practices and forcible cell extractions.”

In the declaration, Dhiab claims through his lawyer that the judge’s prediction had come true – he is once again suffering forcible extractions from his cell, choking when the feeding tube was roughly forced down his throat, and pain in his stomach and kidneys caused by straps on the restraint chair, or “torture chair” as he calls it, being applied too tightly. “Is it necessary for them to torture me? Is it necessary for them to choke me every day with the tube? Is it necessary for them to make my throat so swollen every day? Do I have to suffer every day?” Dhiab said, according to his lawyer’s account of the conversation.

The Defense Department insists that it only force feeds Guantánamo prisoners to keep them alive when they are at risk of death. In her ruling, Kessler reminded the US government that according to the Pentagon’s own standard operating protocols, enteral feeding should only be practiced on Dhiab when he is facing an “imminent risk of death or great bodily injury”.