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Federal judge signals green for open court on force feeding at Guantanamo

A federal judge ruled that the Justice Department cannot block the public and press from hearing about force feeding at the prison in Guatanamo, Cuba. “With such a long-standing and ongoing public interest at stake, it would be particularly egregious to bar the public from observing the credibility of live witnesses, the substance of their testimony, whether proper procedures are being followed, and whether the court is treating all participants fairly,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler. (Legal Times, October 2, 2014, by Zoe Tillman)

Barry Eisler, for the Freedom of Press Foundation, October 3, 2014, writes that keeping the public from seeing the horrendous images of abusive treatment allows the public to ignore it. “It might not be a bad idea to ask whether a policy we can only be comfortable with by keeping it secret and obscuring it with strained euphemisms is such a great idea. Now that we’ll be able to actually see what one such policy looks like, let’s hope we’ll be able to make some progress toward rediscovering our commitment to law, to morality, and to our own national security,” writes Eisler.