In what is being hailed as a “historic legal challenge” to the United States government, a U.S. court will hear for the first time from a Guantánamo detainee who claims that force-feeding at the U.S. military prison amounts to torture.
Emad Hassan, who is severely ill and suffers from serious internal injuries — which his lawyers at the human rights group Reprieve say are the direct result of force-feeding— has been held without charge since 2002 despite having been cleared for release since 2009.
Hassan has been force-fed 5000 times since 2007 “as part of the military’s efforts to break his hunger strike,” said Reprieve.
“All I want is what President Obama promised – my liberty, and fair treatment for others,” stated Hassan. “I have been cleared for five years, and I have been force-fed for seven years. This is not a life worth living, it is a life of constant pain and suffering.”
“While I do not want to die,” he continued, “it is surely my right to protest peacefully without being degraded and abused every day.”
The case, Imad Abdullah Hasan v Barack Obama, is the first of its kind and follows a ruling last month in which a U.S. federal court said prisoners at the military prison can now sue over force-feeding, a practice considered by international human rights organizations to be a form of torture.
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