US urged to stop force-feeding Guantanamo hunger strikers

The US authorities today face demands by doctors from around the world to abandon the barbaric method of force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay.

More than 250 medical experts protest that the practice, which involves strapping inmates to 'restraint chairs' and pushing tubes into the stomach through the nose, breaches the right of prisoners to refuse treatment.

The United Nations has demanded the immediate closure of the US detention camp in Cuba after concluding that treatment such as force-feeding and prolonged solitary confinement could amount to torture.

Doctors from seven countries, including the best-selling author Oliver Sacks, call for disciplinary action against US counterparts who force-feed detainees.

About 80 prisoners are understood to be refusing food, including a UK resident Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national who is married to a British woman and has four children.

Since August they have been routinely force-fed, an excruciatingly painful practice that causes bleeding and nausea.

The doctors say: "Fundamental to doctors' responsibilities in attending a hunger striker is the recognition that prisoners have a right to refuse treatment.

"The UK government has respected this right even under very difficult circumstances and allowed Irish hunger strikers to die. Physicians do not have to agree with the prisoner, but they must respect their informed decision."

Their open letter, which is published today in The Lancet, has been organised by David Nicholl, a consultant neurologist at the City Hospital in Birmingham, who has won the backing of doctors from Europe, the United States and Australia.

He has campaigned for more than a year over the detainees' plight, running the last London marathon dressed in Guantamano-style orange jump suit and chains, and has urged Tony Blair, the British prime minister, to protest to the White House about the camp's conditions.

Dr Nicholl said: "This letter really shows the strength of feeling amongst the world's leading medical experts. They are saying with one voice that force-feeding of hunger strikers by medical staff at Guantanamo is unequivocally wrong."

Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International, said: "Reports of cruel force-feeding methods at Guantanamo are deeply troubling and only underline the need for independent medical examinations of the prisoners.

"Rather than trying to break the hunger strike by forcibly feeding the detainees, the US should respect their human rights by putting an end to arbitrary detention and ensuring access to justice."

Andrew Mackinlay, a Labour member of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, said: "I hope the US authorities pay heed to this letter. Force-feeding is simply wrong - Britain has direct experience of it from force-feeding suffragettes at the beginning of the last century and abandoned it after then."

About 550 prisoners of some 35 nationalities are being held at the camp, some of them for more than four years. Only 10 have been formally charged with a crime and none has so far been brought to trial.

The letter's signatories point out that the World Medical Association (WMA) prohibited force-feeding and that the American Medical Association backed the WMA's declaration.

They say: "We urge the US government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned forthwith in accordance with internationally agreed standards."

- INDEPENDENT