THE US government is mounting a desperate attempt to hide the reality of suffering in the notorious Guantanamo Bay concentration camp from the public, asking District Judge Gladys Kessler to halt the release of video footage.

Ms Kessler conducted a three-day hearing into the treatment of Syrian inmate and hunger striker Abu Wa’el Dhiab last week.

Mr Dhiab’s lawyers argue that his forcible removal from his cell, restraint and force-feeding constitutes abusive treatment.

And the judge ordered the release of 28 video tapes documenting the process on October 3, rejecting the “deeply troubling” efforts of the Barack Obama administration to hold the first force-feeding hearing relating to the camp behind closed doors.

Ms Kessler said the government had not made a case for closed hearings and “seemed to have forgotten” the presumption of open justice.

She set today as the deadline by which identifying information including faces, voices and names must be blocked out so the videos can be publicly viewed.

But the Justice Department accuses her of substituting the court’s judgment for that of members of the executive branch of government and says this is contrary to precedent.

It has asked her to suspend the release of the videos so it has time to work out if it wants to appeal against it.

Despite repeated pledges to close Guantanamo and end the legal limbo of the kidnapped individuals trapped there, President Obama has not done so.