Hunger strike said to be broken brutally

LONDON -- A prisoner being held at Guantanamo Bay said US personnel used methods that amounted to torture to break his hunger strike, according to a broadcast report yesterday.

''I would still be on the strike if I had any choice. Death is better than continuing life like this," Fawzi al-Odah was quoted as saying on British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

A BBC reporter put written questions to Odah's lawyer, Tom Wilner, who wrote down the responses obtained in a meeting at Guantanamo, the US naval base in Cuba.

Many of the details of the story were released by Wilner on Feb. 8 after the US Department of Defense declassified his notes.

The 29-year-old Kuwaiti, in his exchanges with the BBC, repeated his assertions that hunger strikers were warned they would be strapped tightly to a restraint chair and force-fed with a thick tube three times a day if they persisted.

When Wilner first released Odah's account last month, US Department of Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman said the feeding was administered by medical professionals in ''a humane and compassionate manner" and only when necessary.