Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged inmate

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Paul Merrell

California Tells Court It Can't Release Inmates Early Because It Would Lose Cheap Priso... - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...-be-keeping-people-behind-bars

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Out of California’s years-long litigation over reducing the population of prisons deemed unconstitutionally overcrowded by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, another obstacle to addressing the U.S. epidemic of mass incarceration has emerged: The utility of cheap prison labor. In recent filings, lawyers for the state have resisted court orders that they expand parole programs, reasoning not that releasing inmates early is logistically impossible or would threaten public safety, but instead that prisons won’t have enough minimum security inmates left to perform inmate jobs. The dispute culminated Friday, when a three-judge federal panel ordered California to expand an early parole program. California now has no choice but to broaden a program known as 2-for-1 credits that gives inmates who meet certain milestones the opportunity to have their sentences reduced. But California’s objections raise troubling questions about whether prison labor creates perverse incentives to keep inmates in prison even when they don’t need to be there.
  • As has been California’s practice in this litigation, California didn’t initially take the order that seriously. It continued to work toward reducing its prison population. In fact, the ballot initiative passed by voters in November to reclassify several nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors will go a long way toward achieving that goal. But it insisted that it didn’t have to do it the way the court wanted it to, because doing so could deplete the state’s source of inmate firefighters. The incentives of this wildfire and other labor programs are seemingly in conflict with the goal of reducing U.S. reliance on mass incarceration. But the federal judges overseeing this litigation were nonetheless sensitive to the state’s need for inmate firefighters. That’s why they ordered the state to offer 2-for-1 credits only to those many inmates who weren’t eligible for the wildfire program. This way, inmates who were eligible would still be incentivized to choose fighting wildfires, while those that weren’t could choose other rehabilitative work programs to reduce their sentence.
  • The debate centers around an expansive state program to have inmates fight wildfires. California is one of several states that employs prison labor to fight wildfires. And it has the largest such program, as the state’s wildfire problem rapidly expands arguably because of climate change. By employing prison inmates who are paid less than $2 per day, the state saves some $1 billion, according to a recent BuzzFeed feature of the practice. California relies upon that labor source, and only certain classes of nonviolent inmates charged with lower level offenses are eligible for the selective program. They must then meet physical and other criteria. In exchange, they get the opportunity for early release, by earning twice as many credits toward early release as inmates in other programs would otherwise earn, known as 2-for-1 credits. In February, the federal court overseeing California’s prison litigation ordered the state to expand this 2-for-1 program to some other rehabilitation programs so that other inmates who exhibit good behavior and perform certain work successfully would also be eligible for even earlier release.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Department of Corrections didn’t like this idea, either. It argued that offering 2-for-1 credits to any inmates who perform other prison labor would mean more minimum security inmates would be released earlier, and they wouldn’t have as large of a labor pool. They would still need to fill those jobs by drawing candidates who could otherwise work fighting wildfires, and would be “forced to draw down its fire camp population to fill these vital MSF [Minimum Support Facility] positions.” In other words, they didn’t want to have to hire full-time employees to perform any of the work that inmates are now performing. The plaintiffs had this to say in response: “Defendants baldly assert that if the labor pool for their garage, garbage, and city park crews is reduced, then ‘CDCR would be forced to draw-down its fire camp population to fill these vital MSF positions.’ That is a red herring; Defendants would not be ‘forced’ to do anything. They could hire public employees to perform tasks like garbage collection, garage work and recycling … ”
  • California Attorney General Kamala Harris told BuzzFeed News she was “shocked” to learn that the lawyers in her department had argued against parole credits because they wanted to retain their labor force. “I will be very candid with you, because I saw that article this morning, and I was shocked, and I’m looking into it to see if the way it was characterized in the paper is actually how it occurred in court,” Harris said in an interview with BuzzFeed published late Tuesday. “I was very troubled by what I read. I just need to find out what did we actually say in court.” Harris was referring to the Los Angeles Times’ report on the three-judge panel’s ruling, which included a line referencing that argument. While ThinkProgress does not know what lawyers for the state said in court, the written motions submitted in the litigation make very clear that the state did indeed argue against expanding the early release program on the basis that it would deplete the labor force.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 14
     
    In the land of the free and the home of the brave ...j California has been in deep judicial doo-doo because of massive prison overcrowding and years of ignoring federal court orders to drastically reduce its prison population, leading to a Supreme Court decision that basically said, "no more stalling." 
Paul Merrell

U.S. to Release 6,000 Inmates Under New Sentencing Guidelines - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...new-sentencing-guidelines.html

incarceration-nation releases sentencing-reform

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department is preparing to release roughly 6,000 inmates from federal prison as part of an effort to ease overcrowding and roll back the harsh penalties given to nonviolent drug dealers in the 1980s and ’90s, according to federal law enforcement officials.The release is scheduled to occur from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, and will be one of the largest one-time discharges of inmates from federal prisons in American history, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing matters that had not been publicly announced by the Justice Department.
  • In April, the United States Sentencing Commission created guidelines that reduced the penalties for many nonviolent drug crimes and made some of those changes retroactive. Officials said at the time that the move applied to at least 50,000 federal inmates sentenced under the previous guidelines. The new guidelines were issued amid increasing support for an overhaul of sentencing. The United States has a quarter of the world’s prison population and both Republicans and Democrats agree that prison spending, which accounts for a third of the Justice Department’s budget, needs to be reduced. News of the prison release was first reported by The Washington Post. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are considering other ways to scale back the numbers of people who are facing lengthy stays in federal prison because of nonviolent drug crimes.
Paul Merrell

US Terminates Contracts with Private Prison Industry, Stocks Slump - nsnbc internationa... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...e-prison-industry-stocks-slump

corporatism privatization private-prisons DoJ Bureau-of-Prisons

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • The United States’ Department of Justice, on Thursday, announced that it will cut back and ultimately terminate contracts with private prison companies. The announcement caused stock prices  of corporations involved in America’s prison-industrial complex to slump.
  • Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates noted that private prisons don’t provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources and don’t save substantially on costs. Yates posted a blog, citing that the dwindling federal prison population as one of the drivers of the shift in policy. She added that the population in bureau or private facilities had gone down from about 220,000 in 2013 to 195,000 inmates. The DoD’s announcement about the beginning of the end of the U.S. prison-industrial complex had an immediate impact on the industry leaders’ stocks. At 2:05 p.m. in New York City, Corrections Corporation slumped 37 percent to $17.06 after it earlier plummeted 52 percent. The real estate investment trust’s biggest intraday loss in nearly 16 years. The GEO Group slumped 38 percent to $20.14, after earlier falling 50 percent, its largest drop since the stock began trading in 1994. Corrections Corp.’s report noted 24 government contracts were set to expire in December of this year, as were 10 more that were not eligible for renewal. The contracts were worth $594 million in revenue for the single corporation — 33% of the company’s total revenue. GEO Group currently receives 45% of its total revenue from government agencies.
  • A substantial rise in incarceration rates, and a boom for the prison-industrial complex came as a result of the failed war on drugs. The prison population grew with a whopping 800 percent between 1980 and 2003. It is noteworthy that privately run prisons have not only shown to be substandard, they have also gained notoriety for abuse of prisoners and rights violations. However, Yates noted that prison populations often grew at a far faster rate than the Bureau of Prisons could accommodate in their own facilities. She claimed that the bureau began contracting with privately operated correctional institutions to confine some federal inmates.  By 2013, as both the federal prison population and the proportion of federal prisoners in private facilities reached their peak, the bureau was housing approximately 15 percent of its population, or nearly 30,000 inmates, in privately operated prisons.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Yates added that the memo (published here), reflects important steps that the bureau has already taken to reduce its reliance on private prisons, including a decision three weeks ago, to end private prison contracts for approximately 1,200 beds. Taken together, these steps will reduce the private prison population by more than half from its peak in 2013 and puts the Department of Justice on a path to ensure that all federal inmates are ultimately housed at bureau facilities, she added. Even if this reduction manifests, the USA would still be one of the countries with the highest incarceration rates, globally.
Gary Edwards

The List: Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...st-obama-closures-for-shutdown

government-shutdown Obammunism financial-crisis

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13
     
    "The media may or may not report on these individual occurrences, but what they will never do is provide the American people with the full context and scope of Obama's shrill pettiness. Below is a list of illogical, unnecessary, and shockingly spiteful moves our government is making in the name of essential and non-essential. This list will be regularly updated, and if you have something you feel should be added, please email me at jnolte@breitbart.com or tweet me @NolteNC.Please include a link to the news source. -- 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer - The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatment. Obama has threatened to veto this funding. 2. The World War II Memorial - The WWII memorial on the DC Mall is a 24/7 open-air memorial that is not regularly staffed. Although the White House must have known that WWII veterans in their eighties and nineties had already booked flights to visit this memorial, the White House still found the resources to spitefully barricade the attraction.  The Republican National Committee has offered to cover any costs required to keep the memorial open. The White House refused. Moreover, like the NIH, the GOP will pass a compromise bill that would fund America's national parks. Obama has threatened to veto that bill. 3. Furloughed Military Chaplains Not Allowed to Work for Free - Furloughed military chaplains willing to celebrate Mass and baptisms for free have been told they will be punished for doing so. 4. Business Stops In Florida Keys - Although the GOP have agreed to compromise in the ongoing budget stalemate and fund the parks, Obama has threatened to veto that funding. As a result, small businesses, hunters, and commercial fisherman can't practice their trade. While the feds have deemed the personnel necessary to keep this area open "non-essential," the "enforcement office
Paul Merrell

Boycott, Divest and Sanction Corporations That Feed on Prisons  :    Informat... - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41455.htm

incarceration-nation for-profit-prisons boycott

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • All attempts to reform mass incarceration through the traditional mechanisms of electoral politics, the courts and state and federal legislatures are useless. Corporations, which have turned mass incarceration into a huge revenue stream and which have unchecked political and economic power, have no intention of diminishing their profits. And in a system where money has replaced the vote, where corporate lobbyists write legislation and the laws, where chronic unemployment and underemployment, along with inadequate public transportation, sever people in marginal communities from jobs, and where the courts are a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate state, this demands a sustained, nationwide revolt. “Organizing boycotts, work stoppages inside prisons and the refusal by prisoners and their families to pay into the accounts of phone companies and commissary companies is the only weapon we have left,” said Amos Caley, who runs the Interfaith Prison Coalition, a group formed by prisoners, the formerly incarcerated, their families and religious leaders.
  • These boycotts, they said, will be directed against the private phone, money transfer and commissary companies, and against the dozens of corporations that exploit prison labor. The boycotts will target food and merchandise vendors, construction companies, laundry services, uniforms companies, prison equipment vendors, cafeteria services, manufacturers of pepper spray, body armor and the array of medieval instruments used for the physical control of prisoners, and a host of other contractors that profit from mass incarceration. The movement will also call on institutions, especially churches and universities, to divest from corporations that use prison labor. The campaign, led by the Interfaith Prison Coalition, will include a call to pay all prisoners at least the prevailing minimum wage of the state in which they are held. (New Jersey’s minimum wage is $8.38 an hour.) Wages inside prisons have remained stagnant and in real terms have declined over the past three decades. A prisoner in New Jersey makes, on average, $1.20 for eight hours of work, or about $28 a month. Those incarcerated in for-profit prisons earn as little as 17 cents an hour. Over a similar period, phone and commissary corporations have increased fees and charges often by more than 100 percent. There are nearly 40 states that allow private corporations to exploit prison labor. And prison administrators throughout the country are lobbying corporations that have sweatshops overseas, trying to lure them into the prisons with guarantees of even cheaper labor and a total absence of organizing or coordinated protest.
  • Corporations currently exploiting prison labor include Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, AutoZone, Bank of America, Bayer, Berkshire Hathaway, Cargill, Caterpillar, Chevron, the former Chrysler Group, Costco Wholesale, John Deere, Eddie Bauer, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO, GlaxoSmithKline, Glaxo Wellcome, Hoffmann-La Roche, International Paper, JanSport, Johnson & Johnson, Kmart, Koch Industries, Mary Kay, McDonald’s, Merck, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Sarah Lee, Sears, Shell, Sprint, Starbucks, State Farm Insurance, United Airlines, UPS, Verizon, Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart and Wendy’s.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “Prisoner telephone rates in New Jersey are some of the highest in the country,” Caley said. “Global Tel Link charges prisoners and their families $4.95 for a 15-minute phone call, which is about two and a half times the national average for local inmate calling services.”
  • Prison phone services are a $1.2-billion-a-year industry. Prisoners outside New Jersey are charged by Global Tel Link, which makes about $500 million a year, as much as $17 for a 15-minute phone call. A call of that duration outside a prison would cost about $2. If a customer deposits $25 into a Global Tel Link phone account, he or she must pay an additional service charge of $6.95. And Global Tel Link is only one of several large corporations that exploit prisoners and their families. JPay is a corporation that deals in privatized money transfers to prisoners. It controls money transfers for about 70 percent of the prison population. The company charges families that put money into prisoners’ accounts additional service fees of as much as 45 percent. JPay generates more than $50 million a year in revenue. The Keefer Group, which controls prison commissaries in more than 800 public and private prisons, and which often charges prisoners double what items cost outside prison walls, makes $41 million a year in profit.
  • Prisons, to swell corporate profits, force prisoners to pay for basic items including shoes. Prisoners in New Jersey pay $45 for a pair of basic Reebok shoes—almost twice the average monthly wage. If a prisoner needs an insulated undergarment or an extra blanket to ward off the cold at night he must buy it. Packages from home, once permitted, have been banned to force prisoners to buy grossly overpriced items at the commissary or company-run store. Some states have begun to charge prisoners rent. This gouging is burying many prisoners and their families in crippling debt, debt that prisoners carry when they are released from prison. The United States has 2.3 million people in prison, 25 percent of the world’s prison population, although we are only 5 percent of the world’s population. We have increased our prison population by about 700 percent since 1970. Corporations control about 18 percent of federal prisoners and 6.7 percent of all state prisoners. And corporate prisons account for nearly all newly built prisons. Nearly half of all immigrants detained by the federal government are shipped to corporate-run prisons. And slavery is legal in prisons under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”
  • Vast sums are at stake. The for-profit prison industry is worth $70 billion. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest owner of for-profit prisons and immigration detention facilities in the country, had revenues of $1.7 billion in 2013 and profits of $300 million. CCA holds an average of 81,384 inmates in its facilities on any one day. Aramark Holdings Corp., a Philadelphia-based company that contracts through Aramark Correctional Services to provide food to 600 correctional institutions across the United States, was acquired in 2007 for $8.3 billion by investors that included Goldman Sachs. And, as in the wider society, while members of a tiny, oligarchic corporate elite each are paid tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars annually, the workers who generate these profits live in misery.  “It is an abomination that prisoners are paid 22 cents an hour, $1.20 cents a day,” Larry Hamm told the Newark meeting. “Every prisoner should get the minimum wage of New Jersey, $8.38 per hour.”
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Apr 15
     
    Why pay a liveable wage to American workers if you can get prison labor for less than market prices in Bangla Desh? The prison telephone racket has bothered me for many years. The FCC authorized no-limit telephone charges for prisoners and their families on the simplistic grounds of, "well, they prisoners who have reduced civil rights anyway. But it ignored that most prison phone calls are collect calls to families on the outside, who are not prisoners and still have their full civil rights. The for-profit prison industry is a prime example of not thinking things through before privatizing a formerly government function. Privatization creates a lobby for the industry, as Americans have learned all to well with the privatization of most Dept. of Defense work other than actual combat.   Already, for profit prison industries are showing up in state legislatures to demand longer prison sentences. They were the prime movers behind the "mandatory minimum sentence" movement, which has stuffed prisons to overflowing. 
Paul Merrell

Profit Prisons - Inmates Charged for Jail Stay, Left Buried in Debt When they Get Out -... - 0 views

countercurrentnews.com/...ried-in-debt-when-they-get-out

U.S. prisons pay-for-stay ACLU

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Did you know that people who end up in prison for a variety of different reasons have a very good chance of being charged a fee for every day that they stay behind bars as if they were voluntarily staying at a hotel? According to a new ACLU report, this is exactly what is happening all across the United States, in select prisons where these policies have been enacted. The BBC reported that roughly 10 million people in the United States owe a combined total of over $10 billion in “pay-to-stay” prison debt. Obviously, these fees can make a bad situation even worse for people who are serving time for petty crimes, especially considering that most of the people who do end up behind bars come from lives of poverty to begin with. Now, when many of these inmates are released from prison they are unable to get back on their feet due to this crippling debt. Some people who have been arrested for petty offenses, many drug-related, are released from jail with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt that make it near impossible for them to rebuild their lives.
  • This week, the ACLU has released one of the first comprehensive reports on the “pay-to-stay” policies that have been implemented at prisons around the country. Mike Brickner of the ACLU told the BBC that these policies are destructive to people who come from lives of poverty, and to make matters worse they don’t even work. “We’re hearing from people who are claiming this is going on their credit scores and preventing them from doing all sorts of things. They simply don’t work. People are coming out of jail with hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of debt, and if you are a returning citizen, having that is just another albatross around your neck. It’s a program that maybe feels good to people who have a tough on crime mentality, but, in fact, it’s sort of a fruitless exercise,” Brickner said. Even supporters of the program have admitted that it doesn’t bring in enough money to justify its existence. Dale Osborne, a jail administrator from the state of Ohio where 40 out of 75 jails have pay-to-stay policies, has defended the program, but admits that it is a failure and that he would not really miss it. “It offsets the expenses that the taxpayers are required to have. The more revenue I can generate within a facility, the less the taxpayers have to pay,” he said, adding that “If we lost the ability to have a pay-for-stay program here I’m not going to have any huge heartache over the loss of it.” While it may not be a huge advantage to the prisons, this program is a massive disadvantage for former prisoners who are attempting to re-enter society.
Paul Merrell

We were subjected to 'meticulous, daily torture' - freed Gitmo detainee - RT News - 0 views

rt.com/...amo-torture-sudan-detainee-552

war & peace war on terror™ Gitmo torture government secrecy war-crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • After years of being held at the US Naval Base in Cuba without trial, Ibrahim Idris, one of two Sudanese detainees released on Thursday, said US prison officials had "systematically tortured" him in the course of his 11-year imprisonment at Gitmo. Idris, who has been described by US officials as mentally ill, delivered his comments in a news conference in Khartoum, just hours after returning home courtesy of a US military plane. Appearing weak and speaking with apparent difficultly, Idris gave a brief account of his lengthy imprisonment at Gitmo. “We have been subjected to meticulous, daily torture," he said. "We were helpless…on an isolated island, surrounded by weapons." He praised the Sudanese government and human rights organizations for working to secure the release of prisoners at Gitmo, which has been called “the GULAG of our times” by Amnesty International. Closed-door military tribunals, for example, have been riddled with problems, including courtroom speakers that have a mysterious tendency for being blocked during key testimony.
  • Another released detainee, Noor Othman Muhammed, was unable to attend the conference because he was recovering in the hospital, Idris said. On Feb. 18, 2011, Muhammed pleaded guilty in a military tribunal to offenses under the Military Commissions Act of 2009, and was sentenced to 14 years confinement, according to a Defense Department news release. In exchange for his guilty plea and Muhammed's cooperation with prosecutors, the military court agreed through a pre-trial agreement to suspend all confinement in excess of 34 months. Idris, who had been designated for transfer since 2009, said some of the former prisoners had pled guilty in a bid to secure their freedom. As Barack Obama wins congressional approval to transfer some prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to their home countries, a released Sudanese inmate spoke of the torture he and others endured at the hands of their American jailers. Approval for a partial detainee release is contained in the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the Senate by an 84-15 vote on Thursday night.
  • While the bill does not address all of the administration's concerns, its provisions ... will provide the administration additional flexibility to transfer detainees abroad consistent with our national security interests," White House spokesman Jay Carney said earlier Thursday. Of those still held in the prison, five individuals stand accused of participating in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. At the same time, some four dozen detainees are considered “too dangerous” to be released. About half of Gitmo's 158 detainees have been cleared to be released since 2009, yet congressional restrictions prevented that from happening.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • A new outbreak of hunger strikes happened in early 2013. By July, 106 of the 166 detainees were on hunger strike, with 45 of them being force-fed.
  • According to Idris, those inmates who participated in these protests were “doubly tortured.” In November, a 19-member task force concluded in a 269-page report, entitled 'Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the ‘War on Terror', that since September 11, 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) and CIA ordered medical professionals to assist in intelligence gathering, as well as forced-feeding of hunger strikers, in a way that inflicted “severe harm.” Gitmo officials announced earlier this month that the US military will no longer disclose to the media and public whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike, explaining that "the release of this information serves no operational purpose."
Paul Merrell

Uruguay agrees to U.S. request to take some Guantanamo inmates | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...antanamo-idUSBREA2J1Z220140320

war & peace Gitmo-detainees Uruguay

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - Uruguay has agreed with the United States to accept some prisoners held in the much-criticized detention center at the U.S. military base of Guantanamo Bay, President Jose Mujica said on Thursday. The Obama administration, which wants to close the center used to imprison people captured after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been talking to several countries about relocating inmates.The South American country had accepted the request by Washington to take some prisoners and would consider them refugees, Mujica told journalists while attending an unrelated farming event.
  • Weekly newspaper Busqueda reported that Uruguay had accepted a U.S. proposal to take five detainees from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba base for two years. The 78-year-old ex-guerrilla Mujica agreed after speaking to Cuban President Raul Castro and sending delegates to visit the detention center, the report said.Guantanamo has been criticized by human rights groups, with some of its prisoners held for a decade or longer without being charged or given a trial. Opened by President George W. Bush in 2002 to hold terrorism suspects rounded up overseas, Guantanamo became a symbol of the excesses of his "war on terror.""They are coming as refugees and there will be a place for them in Uruguay if they want to bring their families," said Mujica, who spent 14 years in prison before and during his country's 1973-1985 dictatorship.
  • State Department envoy Clifford Sloan said last month that the United States was in talks with a wide range of countries to speed the transfer of prisoners as President Barack Obama looked to make good on a long-standing promise to close the facility.
Paul Merrell

Justice Department seeks to undo thousands of old sentences | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...dothousandsofoldsentences.html

War on Drugs™ clemency prisoners

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Setting in motion one of the most wide-ranging government efforts to roll back the legacy of harsh anti-crime laws dating to the drug wars of the 1980s, the Justice Department on Wednesday announced an initiative to extend presidential clemency to potentially thousands of federal prisoners who would receive more lenient rulings if they were sentenced and convicted today. 
  • Cole said the department would, in its effort to retrofit penalties, prioritize inmates who are nonviolent, low-level drug offenders without significant ties to large-scale criminal organizations. Such offenders must also have served at least 10 years of their prison sentences, not have a significant history of crime or violence and have demonstrated good conduct in prison. Though Cole declined to say how many prisoners that might encompass, The Associated Press, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported on Wednesday that the Justice Department had identified about 23,000 people who had served sentences of at least 10 years. While Cole said the most obvious candidates would be those inmates sentenced prior to the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which narrowed the disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenders, he said the initiative was not limited to them.
Paul Merrell

Resurrecting the Dubious State Secrets Privilege | John Dean | Verdict | Legal Analysis... - 0 views

verdict.justia.com/...ubious-state-secrets-privilege

Dark-State state-secrets government secrecy Restis DoJ Holder

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • In an unusual move, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a motion to make a private lawsuit simply disappear. While the U.S. Government is not a party to this defamation lawsuit—Victor Restis et al. v. American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc.—filed July 19, 2013, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Attorney General Eric Holder is concerned that the discovery being undertaken might jeopardize our national security.
  • The government’s argument for intervening in this lawsuit is technical and thin.
  • The strongest precedent in the government’s brief in the current case is the 1985 case of Fitzgerald v. Penthouse Intern., Ltd. Fitzgerald had sued Penthouse Magazine for an allegedly libelous article, but the U.S. Navy moved to intervene on the ground that the government had a national security interest which would not be adequately protected by the parties, so the government requested the action be dismissed, after invoking the state secrets privilege. The federal district court granted the motions and dismissed the case, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for Fourth Circuit affirmed. So there is precedent for this unusual action by the government in a private lawsuit, but the legitimacy of the state secrets privilege remains subject to question.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • In February 2000, Judith Loether, a daughter of one of the three civilians killed in the 1948 B-29 explosion, discovered the government’s once-secret accident report for the incident on the Internet. Loether had been seven weeks old when her father died but been told by her mother what was known of her father’s death and the unsuccessful efforts to find out what had truly happened. When Loether read the accident report she was stunned. There were no national security secrets whatsoever, rather there was glaringly clear evidence of the government’s negligence resulting in her father’s death. Loether shared this information with the families of the other civilian engineers who had been killed in the incident and they joined together in a legal action to overturn Reynolds, raising the fact that the executive branch of the government had misled the Supreme Court, not to mention the parties to the earlier lawsuit.
  • Lou Fisher looked closely at the state secrets privilege in his book In The Name of National Security, as well as in follow-up articles when the Reynolds case was litigated after it was discovered, decades after the fact, that the government had literally defrauded the Supreme Court in Reynolds, e.g., “The State Secrets Privilege: Relying on Reynolds.” The Reynolds ruling emerged from litigation initiated by the widows of three civilian engineers who died in a midair explosion of a B-29 bomber on October 6, 1948. The government refused to provide the widows with the government’s accident report. On March 9, 1953, the Supreme Court created the state secrets privilege when agreeing the accident report did not have to be produced since the government claimed it contained national security secrets. In fact, none of the federal judges in the lower courts, nor the justices on the Supreme Court, were allowed to read the report.
  • Lowell states in his letter: “By relying solely upon ex parte submissions to justify its invocation of the state secrets privilege, especially in the unprecedented circumstance of private party litigation without an obvious government interest, the Government has improperly invoked the state secrets privilege, deprived Plaintiffs of the opportunity to test the Government’s claims through the adversarial process, and limited the Court’s opportunity to make an informed judgment. “ Lowell further claims that in “the typical state secrets case, the Government will simultaneously file both a sealed declaration and a detailed public declaration.” (Emphasis in Lowell’s letter.) To bolster this contention, he provided the court with an example, and offered to provide additional examples if so requested.
  • The Justice Department’s memorandum of law accompanying its motion to intervene states that once the state secrets privilege has been asserted “by the head of the department with control over the matter in question . . . the scope of judicial review is quite narrow.” Quoting from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling establishing this privilege in 1953, U.S. v. Reynolds, the brief adds: “the sole determination for the court is whether, ‘from all the circumstances of the case . . . there is a reasonable danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose military [or other] matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged.’”In short, all the Justice Department need claim is the magic phrase—”state secrets”—after assuring the court that the head of department or agency involved has personally decided it is information that cannot be released. That ends the matter. This is what has made this privilege so controversial, not to mention dubious. Indeed, invocation by the executive branch effectively removes the question from judicial determination, and the information underlying the decision is not even provided to the court.
  • As Fisher and other scholars note, there is much more room under the Reynolds ruling for the court to take a hard look at the evidence when the government claims state secrets than has been common practice. Fisher reminds: “The state secrets privilege is qualified, not absolute. Otherwise there is no adversary process in court, no exercise of judicial independence over what evidence is needed, and no fairness accorded to private litigants who challenge the government . . . . There is no justification in law or history for a court to acquiesce to the accuracy of affidavits, statements, and declarations submitted by the executive branch.” Indeed, he noted to do so is contrary to our constitutional system of checks and balances.
  • Time to Reexamine Blind Adherence to the State Secrets PrivilegeIn responding to the government’s move to intervene, invoke state secrets, and dismiss the Restis lawsuit, plaintiffs’ attorney Abbe Lowell sent a letter to Judge Edgardo Ramos, the presiding judge on the case on September 17, 2014, contesting the Department of Justice’s ex parte filings, and requesting that Judge Ramos “order the Government to file a public declaration in support of its filing that will enable Plaintiffs to meaningfully respond.” Lowell also suggested as an alternative that he “presently holds more than sufficient security clearances to be given access to the ex parte submission,” and the court could do here as in other national security cases, and issue a protective order that the information not be shared with anyone. While Lowell does not so state, he is in effect taking on the existing state secrets privilege procedure where only the government knows what is being withheld and why, and he is taking on Reynolds.
  • To make a long story short, the Supreme Court was more interested in the finality of their decisions than the fraud that had been perpetrated upon them. They rejected the direct appeal, and efforts to relegate the case through the lower courts failed. As Fisher notes, the Court ruled in Reynolds based on “vapors and allusions,” rather than facts and evidence, and today it is clear that when it uncritically accepted the government’s word, the Court abdicated its duty to protect the ability of each party to present its case fairly, not to mention it left the matter under the control of a “self-interested executive” branch.
  • Lowell explains it is not clear—and suggests the government is similarly unclear in having earlier suggested a “law enforcement privilege”—as to why the state secrets privilege is being invoked, and argues this case can be tried without exposing government secrets. Citing the Fitzgerald ruling, Lowell points out dismissal is appropriate “[o]nly when no amount of effort and care on the part of the court and the parties will safeguard privileged material is dismissal warranted.”
  • No telling how Judge Ramos will rule, and the government has a remarkable record of prevailing with the deeply flawed state secrets privilege. But Lowell’s letter appears to say, between the lines, that he has a client who is prepared to test this dubious privilege and the government’s use of it in this case if Judge Ramos dismisses this lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where that ruling would be reviewed, sees itself every bit the intellectual equal of the U.S. Supreme Court and it is uniquely qualified to give this dubious privilege and the Reynolds holding a reexamination. It is long past time this be done.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Sep 14
     
    Interesting take on the Restis case by former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean. Where the State Secrets Privilege is at its very nastiest, in my opinion, is in criminal prosecutions where the government withholds potentially exculpatory evidence on grounds of state secrecy. I think the courts have been far too lenient in allowing people to be tried without production of such evidence. The work-around in the Guantanamo Bay inmate cases has been to appoint counsel who have security clearances, but in those cases the lawyer is forbidden from discussing the classified information with the client, who could have valuable input if advised what the evidence is. It's also incredibly unfair in the extraordinary rendition cases, where the courts have let the government get away with having the cases dismissed on state secrecy grounds, even though the tortures have been the victim of criminal official misconduct.  It forces the victims to appeal clear to the Supreme Court before they can start over in an international court with jurisdiction over human rights violations, where the government loses because of its refusal to produce the evidence.  (Under the relevant treaties that the U.S. is a party to, the U.S. is required to provide a judicial remedy without resort to claims of national security secrecy.) Then the U.S. refuses to pay the judgments of the International courts, placing the U.S. in double breach of its treaty obligations. We see the same kinds of outrageous secrecy playing out in the Senate Intellience Committee's report on CIA torture, where the Obama Administration is using state secrecy claims to delay release of the report summary and minimize what is in it. It's highly unlikely that I will live long enough to read the full report. And that just is not democracy in action. Down with the Dark State!   
Paul Merrell

MoD pays out millions to Iraqi torture victims | Law | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...mod-iraqi-torture-victims

war crimes torture rendition human rights

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • The Ministry of Defence has paid out £14m in compensation and costs to hundreds of Iraqis who complained that they were illegally detained and tortured by British forces during the five-year occupation of the south-east of the country.Hundreds more claims are in the pipeline as Iraqis become aware that they are able to bring proceedings against the UK authorities in the London courts.
  • Lawyers representing former prisoners of the British military say that more than 700 further individuals are likely to make claims next year.Most of those compensated were male civilians who said they had been beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened before being interrogated by British servicemen and women who had detained them on suspicion of involvement in the violent insurgency against the occupation. Others said that they suffered sexual humiliation and were forced into stress positions for prolonged periods.
  • Many of the complaints arise out of the actions of a shadowy military intelligence unit called the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (Jfit) which operated an interrogation centre throughout the five-year occupation. Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross complained about the mistreatment of detainees at Jfit not long after it was first established.Despite this, the interrogators shot hundreds of video films in which they captured themselves threatening and abusing men who can be seen to be bruised, disoriented, complaining of starvation and sleep deprivation and, in some cases, too exhausted to stand unaided.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • During proceedings brought before the high court in London, lawyers representing the former Jfit prisoners suggested the interrogation centre could be regarded as "Britain's Abu Ghraib".
  • Next month, the high court will hear a judicial review of the MoD's refusal to hold a public inquiry into the abuses. Human rights groups and lawyers for the former prisoners say the UK government is obliged to hold an inquiry to meet its obligations under the European convention on human rights – and particularly under article three of the convention, which protects individuals from torture.After a hearing, the high court highlighted matters supporting the allegations of systemic abuse. These included:• The same techniques being used at the same places for the same purpose: to assist interrogation.• The facilities being under the command of an officer.• Military doctors examining each prisoner at various stages in their detention.• Investigations by the Royal Military police that were concluded without anyone being held to account.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Dec 12
     
    The Brits at least have the decency to attempt to make amends for its soldiers who tortured prisoners. Not so in the U.S. *Every* "war on terror" detainee who has filed a case for damages in the U.S. has been thrown out of court at the government's request, usually on grounds of the State Secrets privilege. It is a sad situation that our courts allow government secrecy about unlawful conduct to trump individual rights to redress for injury. 
Paul Merrell

European Parliament Calls for Investigation of Secret CIA Torture Sites - 0 views

theintercept.com/...on-of-secret-cia-torture-sites

war & peace CIA torture rendition EU Parliament investigations

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • The European Parliament on Wednesday condemned the “apathy shown by member states and EU institutions” over torture in secret CIA prisons in Europe. A non-binding resolution, which passed 329-299, urged member states to “investigate, insuring full transparency, the allegations that there were secret prisons on their territory in which people were held under the CIA programme.” It also called on the European Union to undertake fact-finding missions into countries that were known to house American black sites. The resolution named Lithuania, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom as countries complicit in CIA operations. The Parliament also expressed “regret” that none of the architects of the U.S. torture program faced criminal charges, and that the U.S. has failed to cooperate with European criminal probes.
  • Despite banning torture when he came into office, President Obama has fought all attempts to hold Bush administration officials accountable, including by invoking the state secrets privilege to block lawsuits and delaying the release of the Senate Torture Report. When it was made public in 2014, the executive summary of the 6,000-page report confirmed that Poland’s former president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, signed off on the use of a CIA black site in the country, though he denied knowledge of torture. The European Court of Human Rights later issued an unprecedented ruling requiring Poland to pay $262,000 in reparations to two Guantánamo inmates who were tortured in Poland. While Obama continues to “look forward, not back,” victims of U.S. torture are increasingly looking to international courts for justice.
  • The European Parliament’s resolution requested that the European Commission and European Council produce a report on member states’ investigations and prosecutions by the end of June. In April, a federal judge ruled that survivors of CIA torture could sue the two psychologists who designed the CIA’s torture techniques. The case marks the first time a torture-related lawsuit against CIA employees will go to trial.
Paul Merrell

As Federal Prison Population Spiked 790 Percent, Average Drug Sentences Doubled | Think... - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...sentences-doubled-report-finds

incarceration-nation prison-reform drug-laws mandatory-minimums war on drugs™

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The federal prison population has ballooned 790 percent since 1980, and almost half of those now imprisoned are there for drugs. In the coming years, the Bureau of Prisons projects that prison overcrowding will get even worse. While federal prisons are now 35 to 40 percent over capacity, they are expected by 2023 to reach 55 percent over capacity without a policy change, according to a new report by the Urban Institute. The prison population explosion was not driven primarily by a spike in crime, but by a change in punishment. Over a 25-year period, average drug sentences doubled from 38.5 months in 1984 to 74 months in 2011. And over a similar period, the percentage of convicted federal offenders sentenced to prison spiked from 50 percent in 1986 to 90 percent in 2011. Before the passage of several draconian laws that impose mandated harsh sentences and remove judicial discretion, many offenders received probation or a fine for the same violations.
  • Now, public officials are among those looking for a solution. And the Urban Institute found that, while no one policy change will be enough to cure the inmate population explosion, the one single thing that could have the greatest impact is reforming mandatory minimum sentences. “Cutting mandatory minimums in half could save almost $2.5 billion in 10 years,” Urban Institute Senior Fellow Julie Samuels writes. “This measure alone would reduce overcrowding to the lowest it has been in decades.” There are now several bipartisan mandatory minimum bills pending in both houses of Congress. And the bipartisan momentum has never been greater, with even the world’s largest association of corrections officials and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council urging mandatory minimum reform.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13
     
    Life in the "land of the free." Five per cent of the world's population, but  25 per cent of the world's incarcerated prisoners. Drug legalization and release of all prisoners convicted of drug crimes not involving violence would do far more to bring some order to this mess.  But the desire to regulate seems irresistible, particularly when it serves as very thin cover for racial repression. Never mind that legalization would also end the drug war raging in Mexico.  "But we can't legalize immoral behavior." "Would you prefer that people buy their drugs from a government dispensary or from the kid down the block, you know, the one with the AK-47?"  
Paul Merrell

BERLIN: German expose of America's "Secret War" attracts quick, strong U.S. rebuttal | ... - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...expose-of-americas-secret.html

surveillance state U.S. Germany drone attacks NSA-blowback

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • BERLIN — To appreciate the scope and impact of a joint investigative series by the highly regarded German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and German public television station NDR on the depth of American trespasses in this country, you don’t even have to read a word of the reports, or watch the videos.All you really have to do is take a look at the U.S. Embassy rebuttal of the series. The multi-part, multi-media series was put on line beginning Friday morning, though some parts weren’t up until evening. And others are said to be coming during the coming weeks. The U.S. Embassy in Germany press office statement came out just after 3 p.m.
  • News report charges U.S. with conducting illegal operations from German soil
  • The newspaper reaction to that reaction: "The American Embassy also comments and rejects the reports as innuendo. They are stating the the United States "are not kidnapping and torturing on principal." This is a daring claim. Only seven months ago a commission made up of Democrats and Republicans called it "undeniable" that the United States tortured inmates following the terror attacks of 2001. Even President Barack Obama said in 2009 that the American practice of water boarding was torture." The website does note that almost 20 reporters started gathering this series more than a year ago.So it doesn't look as if the newspaper and television station will be backing away from their reporting just yet.In any case, the U.S. embassy makes a strong statement, and takes on some of Germany's most respected journalists.Why? One piece of the SZ English language version of the series begins:“Tapping Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone would seem like an outrageous breach of trust—except that there have been so many other, deadlier and lesser-known, breaches of trust wrought by the U.S. in Germany in recent years.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “Where to begin? There’s the worldwide secret drone war—a massive break with international law. Then there’s the large and growing shadow army of private spies. And, finally, the asylum seekers, whose knowledge is unwittingly used to drop bombs in their home countries.“The worst part? Germany doesn't even seem to mind.”The series goes on at great detail in each of these areas. At times, it advances with videos, including one showing it's reporter being stopped from shooting video near the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, or near a number of bases, and allegedly secret bases, of both the United States and the United Kingdom around Germany.The series reports that the $3 billion a year the United States spends in Germany pay for everything from bases for the 43,000 U.S. soldiers stationed here to the American drone campaign in Africa. According to the newspaper’s English language version, that drone program works like this:
  • “First they practice with their 57 drones getting ready for the real thing. When they receive intelligence on potential targets and suspected terrorists, they deliver that information to U.S. intelligence officers, also based in Germany. And these soldiers are responsible when innocent civilians in Africa die as a result. Moral issues aside, the fact remains: without these bases in Germany, the U.S.’s ‘war on terror’ would not be the well-oiled machine it is now. Germany acts as the headquarters for secret wars in Africa, the European hub for CIA operations and the training ground for drone attacks worldwide. And Germany’s location is indispensable.”There is much, much more, here. And the website notes that stories will be coming out during the next several weeks. 
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Nov 13
     
    German journalists are doing their own digging on U.S. abuse of that nation as a major base for spying and waging war against Africa. In the last line of the quoted article, there is a link to a site that is translating the German reports. 
Paul Merrell

Commission finds 'systematic violation of human rights' at Guantanamo Bay | The Raw Story - 0 views

www.rawstory.com/...human-rights-at-guantanamo-bay

IACHR Guantanamo-Bay human rights

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Monday demanded the United States explain abuses allegedly committed at Guantanamo prison, especially its practice of force-feeding inmates on hunger strike. “The information we have indicates that there was a general and systematic violation of human rights” in Guantanamo, said Rodrigo Escobar Gil, one of the Washington-based body’s seven commissioners. The allegations of forced feeding of Guantanamo prisoners on hunger strike constituted “cruel and inhumane treatment,” he added. “We want to know … what research is being done about it” and “what steps have been taken to meet the demands of the prisoners,” the commissioner said. At its peak, some 106 out of 164 detainees were on hunger strike in protest against the legal limbo in which detainees are held at the prison, which is on a US naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. According to US authorities, who say that the strike ended in late September after more than six months, up to 46 of the detainees were force-fed through nasal tubes at some point in the protest. The government has argued in US court that the practice, called enteral feeding, “is used only when medically necessary to protect life and health.”
  • The IACHR said Monday it wanted unfettered access to the prison camp to investigate. “We have reports of torture and degrading treatment. But all our requests for visits without conditions have been denied. We want to know when they are going to allow visits without pre-conditions,” Escobar Gil added. The commissioner also requested the IACHR report on “the remaining obstacles to the transfer of prisoners to other countries,” noting US President Barack Obama has promised to shut the camp. But the US deputy representative to the commission, Lawrence Gumbiner, said his team could not answer issues raised at the hearing because the 17-day US government shutdown in October left them inadequate time to prepare. “We respectfully propose to the commission to answer in writing in 30 days,” Gumbiner said, generating a buzz of surprise.
Paul Merrell

Prison Dispatches from the War on Terror: Gitmo Detainee's Life an "Endless Horror Movi... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...inee-life-endless-horror-movie

war & peace civil-liberties Gitmo-detainees al-Alwi IACHR-petition

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni national who has been detained at the American prison facility at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, weighs only 98 pounds. Never charged with a crime, al-Alwi, now 35 years old, is one of many detainees at the camp who have gone on a prolonged hunger strike. As described in a recent petition submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) by his lawyers, al-Alwi’s mental and physical state is seriously deteriorating after two years on hunger strike, and subsequent force-feeding.  Since commencing his strike in February 2013, al-Alwi alleges that he has been subjected to escalating physical and psychological abuse from guards, as well as increasingly brutal force-feeding procedures administered by medical personnel at the camp. Human rights organizations have described the force-feeding procedure employed at Guantánamo as torture, and the U.S. government has fought to keep video footage of the force-feeding of al-Alwi and other hunger-striking detainees from public view.
  • Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni national who has been detained at the American prison facility at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, weighs only 98 pounds. Never charged with a crime, al-Alwi, now 35 years old, is one of many detainees at the camp who have gone on a prolonged hunger strike. As described in a recent petition submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) by his lawyers, al-Alwi’s mental and physical state is seriously deteriorating after two years on hunger strike, and subsequent force-feeding.  Since commencing his strike in February 2013, al-Alwi alleges that he has been subjected to escalating physical and psychological abuse from guards, as well as increasingly brutal force-feeding procedures administered by medical personnel at the camp. Human rights organizations have described the force-feeding procedure employed at Guantánamo as torture, and the U.S. government has fought to keep video footage of the force-feeding of al-Alwi and other hunger-striking detainees from public view
  • Al-Alwi, who has described his strike as “a form of peaceful protest against injustice,” has said that he will not resume eating until there is some sort of legal resolution to his case. Prison officials have responded to his hunger strike by placing him in solitary confinement, denying him access to prescribed medical items and subjecting him to extreme temperatures in his cell. 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • According to the petition, al-Alwi’s nostril passages have now swelled shut due to the extra large tubes prison authorities have repeatedly forced down his nasal cavity during this feeding process. He also maintains that the force-feeding sessions have led to heavy vomiting and daily blood loss. Shackled to a chair for hours each day during the force-feeding sessions, al-Alwi now suffers severe back pain and other debilitating physical injuries. In his petition, al-Alwi describes his life in Guantánamo as “an endless horror story.” In April 2013, a delegation from the International Committee of the Red Cross conducted a visit to Guantánamo to meet with detainees and assess conditions there. On the day immediately following their departure, armed guards raided a cellblock housing al-Alwi and several other hunger-striking detainees while they prepared for communal prayers.
  • The complaint further alleges that prisoners were physically assaulted by guards during this raid, some of whom fired rubber-coated steel bullets at them. Al-Alwi was among those wounded, with bullets hitting him in his thigh, elbow and back as he tried to flee from guards firing at him; those shots were allegedly fired from the other side of a chain-link fence. Al-Alwi says that he has never received adequate medical treatment for these wounds; he was handcuffed and left to bleed for 20 minutes by guards before a doctor arrived. A few of his wounds were rubbed with anti-infection cream while the remainder have remained wholly untreated to this day. As a result, al-Alwi says that he suffers chronic and debilitating pain and swelling from these injuries.
  • The circumstances leading to al-Alwi’s detention at Guantánamo are obscure. One of hundreds of young Arab men who were captured by Pakistani bounty hunters following the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Alwi was not a known or wanted terrorist, but was nonetheless turned over to U.S. troops by locals in Pakistan for a cash reward later that year. On Jan. 16, 2002, he arrived at Guantánamo Bay where he has remained ever since. A 2006 report by Amnesty International found that cash bounties offered for turning over “terrorists” to U.S. forces had effectively created a lucrative cash market for capturing young Arab men in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fliers distributed by the U.S. government in the region offered “millions of dollars” in exchange for turning over purported Al-Qaeda and Taliban members, promising those who were able to render suspects to American custody “enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.”
  • Al-Alwi says that American interrogators tortured him until he made false confessions about his involvement in terrorism. Despite having now spent over a decade in custody, with no foreseeable prospect of release, he has not been charged with any crime. Describing his brutal treatment by riot guards who come to restrain him for force-feedings, al-Alwi told his lawyers in the petition:  “I weigh less than 100 pounds. I wear braces on both ankles, and both wrists, and one around my lower back. I am five foot five … and they claim that I am ‘resisting’ … How can I possibly resist anyone, let alone these men?”
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 15
     
    "... in the land of the free and the home of the brave" forget about the right to a speedy trial.
1 - 17 of 17
Showing 20▼ items per page