When a fiddle player and her band toured the prison camps at Guantánamo recently, guards told of a new devious and disturbing tactic confronting them.

A captive on a hunger strike had been jamming something foul up his nose to contaminate the pathway for medical staff who feed him a nutritional shake twice a day.

Political protest or mental illness?

The captive was jamming his own excrement up his nose. On the topic of bodily waste abuse, prison camp management “will not speculate on the motivations for this behavior,” said Navy Cmdr Tamsen Reese, who confirmed the account of country artist Natalie Stovall.

The guards see it as a tactic meant to demean those tasked with keeping the captive alive, wrote Stovall in a blog post. “It means the medic putting the tube up his nose and down his throat must clean out the feces first.’’ But Stovall wondered whether the prisoner was debasing himself as well.

Guantánamo guards have for years told visitors that their war on terror captives “weaponize” their body waste. They throw cups of urine and feces at troops in what soldiers and sailors call “a cocktail.”

But this latest tactic marks a new frontier at the remote prison camps the Pentagon set up nearly 10 years ago.

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