JURIST - Paper Chase: Gitmo hunger strikes decreasing, US military says

[JURIST] The US military said Thursday that the number of detainees participating in hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] had reached its lowest point since October 2005, but offered no reasons for the dropoff. The number of hunger strikes has dropped from as many as 131 to only 22 prisoners with 17 of those receiving nourishment via feeding tubes, although lawyers for the detainees, who won a court order [JURIST report] in October mandating that they be notified by the Defense Department before their clients could be force-fed, insist that the US is undercounting the strikers. The US military has denied allegations that it forced feeding tubes into prisoners' nostrils without using anesthesia or lubricant, and claimed that most of the strikers voluntarily submit to the insertion of feeding tubes. Detainees are participating in the hunger strikes, which began [JURIST report] in August 2005 and spiked in December [JURIST report], to protest their indefinite captivity in the US military prison camp. Reuters has more.

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