WASHINGTON — Two leading Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Obama administration to stop force-feeding Guantanamo prisoners on hunger strike.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote in letter Wednesday that daily mass feedings should be stopped and that the same safeguards need to be applied as in U.S. prisons when feeding is necessary to keep a detainee from dying.
Just over 100 of the 166 prisoners at Guantanamo have been on a hunger strike for four months to protest their indefinite detention. Forty-four of them are strapped down each day and force-fed liquid nutrients through a nasal tube.
President Barack Obama this year renewed his 2008 campaign promise to close the military-run prison in Cuba and relocate the 166 terror suspects there, but Republicans and some Democrats have blocked the move.
