July 15, 2014
By Carol Rosenberg
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
“There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee,” he said in an email. “The matter is in the hands of the individual’s leadership.”
Word of the refusal reached the outside world last week in a call from prisoner Abu Wael Dhiab to attorney Cori Crider of the London-based legal defense group Reprieve. Dhiab, a hunger striker, described how a nurse in the Navy medical corps abruptly refused to “force-feed us” sometime before the Fourth of July — and disappeared from detention center duty.
Crider called the male nurse the first known U.S. military conscience objector of the 18-month-long hunger strike in the prison camps, and said his dissent took “real courage ... none of us should underestimate how hard that has been.”
Dhiab, 43, is challenging Guantánamo force-feeding policy in federal court. A Syrian who was cleared for transfer from Guantánamo in 2010 but who can’t be repatriated because of unrest in his homeland, has been an on-again, off-again hunger striker to protest his indefinite detention....
By Carol Rosenberg
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
In the first known rebellion (click here) against Guantánamo’s force-feeding
policy, a Navy medical officer recently refused to continue managing
tube-feedings of prison hunger strikers and was reassigned to
“alternative duties.”
A prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, would not provide precise details but said Monday night that the episode had “no impact to medical support operations at the base.”
A prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, would not provide precise details but said Monday night that the episode had “no impact to medical support operations at the base.”
“There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee,” he said in an email. “The matter is in the hands of the individual’s leadership.”
Word of the refusal reached the outside world last week in a call from prisoner Abu Wael Dhiab to attorney Cori Crider of the London-based legal defense group Reprieve. Dhiab, a hunger striker, described how a nurse in the Navy medical corps abruptly refused to “force-feed us” sometime before the Fourth of July — and disappeared from detention center duty.
Crider called the male nurse the first known U.S. military conscience objector of the 18-month-long hunger strike in the prison camps, and said his dissent took “real courage ... none of us should underestimate how hard that has been.”
Dhiab, 43, is challenging Guantánamo force-feeding policy in federal court. A Syrian who was cleared for transfer from Guantánamo in 2010 but who can’t be repatriated because of unrest in his homeland, has been an on-again, off-again hunger striker to protest his indefinite detention....
