Defense Lawyers Attempt to Block Force Feeding of Guantanamo Detainees
A man accused of conspiring in the September 11 attacks has refused to eat in protest of his solitary confinement and prison conditions, prompting a threat to force feed him.
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Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a 49-year-old Yemeni accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, who had been held by the C.I.A. before being moved to Guantánamo, is refusing to eat after being placed in isolation and has been told he could be force-fed, a threat that his lawyers described as the first of its kind in the long-running death-penalty case, and psychologically traumatizing for their client, reports the New York Times. Their court filing is the first sign of protest at the maximum-security prison where the former C.I.A. detainees were relocated in April from a dilapidated if more communal facility that regularly suffered power outages and sewage backups.
A spokesman for the Defense Department, Mike Howard, said on Monday that none of the 40 detainees were being fed involuntarily “at this time.” No date has been set for the start of the trial and the case currently has no trial judge. Bin al-Shibh has long been considered the most volatile of the former CIA prisoners at Guantánamo. He has been repeatedly removed from court proceedings for interrupting with complaints of vibrations shaking his cell and painful pinpricks on his skin, which he claims are part of a nearly two-decade U.S. campaign of sleep deprivation. People with knowledge of his conditions said he continued to perceive the problem in his new cell, and would shout at night and cover the surveillance camera, prompting guards to place him in isolation. Since then, he has refused meals “to protest his isolation,” according to a 12-page emergency filing that asks a judge at the military commissions to prohibit his forced feeding.
