Tiny Violins Playing For Terry Nichols

AUGUST 5--In news likely to engender little sympathy, imprisoned Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols reports that he has gone on three separate “official” hunger strikes this year to protest the food he is served by Bureau of Prisons officials.

Nichols, who paired up with Timothy McVeigh in 1995 to murder 168 people, contends that meals at the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado contain little soluble fiber, which has left him suffering from “chronic constipation, bleeding, hemorrhoids.”

Nichols, whose body count includes 19 children, last year filed a U.S. District Court lawsuit over the prison menu since, as a Christian, he “sincerely believes that God created mankind to consume unrefined whole-grains and living foods with its natural insoluble fiber intact to work in a synergistic way to keep Plaintiff’s body (i.e. God’s holy temple) in good health to ward off diseases.”

In a new handwritten court filing, excerpted at left, Nichols noted that he has “gone on 3 ‘official’ hunger strikes” since February. One strike resulted in the murderer “losing 25 pounds, going from 160 lbs to 135 lbs.” That protest, Nichols reported, ended with him being force fed and “requiring an I.V. solution.”

His most recent protest, in May, saw Nichols reportedly drop 35 pounds to a svelte 125 pounds. He claims that he was eventually force fed when medical personnel spent “3 hours of unsuccessful attempts…to insert an I.V.” Nichols explained, “An I.V. was not possible due to the severe dehydration of Plaintiff due to him not consuming any liquids either during his hunger strike.”

Remarkably, a federal judge recently dismissed most of the claims in the jailed-for-life Nichols’s complaint, ruling that the Bobby Sands wannabe “has no constitutional right to a diet of his choice.” (2 pages)