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Black Man Sentenced to 50 Years for Stealing Ribs

9 Jun
Willie Smith Ward

Willie Smith Ward

Willie Smith Ward of Waco, TX was sentenced to 50 years for tucking a rack of  ribs under his shirt inside of a local grocery store in September 2011. The jurors in Waco’s 19th State District Court were less than impressed with 43-year-old Ward’s previous five felony convictions for burglary, attempted robbery, aggravated assault, leaving the scene of an accident and possession of cocaine and four misdemeanor convictions. The jury recommended that Ward be sentenced to 50 years in prison as a habitual criminal.

Jurors took two minutes on Wednesday to convict Ward on robbery charges and about an hour to decide his punishment, according to a local news website. His conviction for stealing the $35 ribs was considered a robbery after he threatened a store employee who followed him out to the parking lot and interrogated him about the bulge in his shirt. The employee testified that he asked Ward what was under the shirt and the slab of ribs fell to the ground. He asked Ward what else he was hiding and Ward said, “I got a knife.” The employee added that Ward further threatened him by stating: “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll show you what I got.” At that point, Ward ran off.

“This verdict shows that the citizens of this county will not tolerate a continued disrespect and disregard for other people and their property,” said Assistant District Attorney J.R. Vicha, who prosecuted Ward with Chris Bullajian. “People who choose to do so will be dealt with seriously and appropriately.” Ward’s sentence and conviction comes just months after the  U.S. Sentencing Commission released a report revealing that Black men received sentences that were a whopping 19.5 percent longer than white men found guilty for similar crimes between December 2007 and September 2011.

In Texas’ neighboring state, Oklahoma, a 17-year-old Caucasian kid decided to consume alcohol and drive home. Unfortunately, he struck a tree and killed his 16-year-old passenger and best friend. The judge sentenced him to 10 years of church every Sunday for his DUI manslaughter conviction. This will not be the outcome for Dallas Cowboy player Josh Brent, who killed his teammate in a car crash while under the influence, nor will it be for any other young Black boy or man under the influence.

Tyler Alred

Tyler Alred

The mass incarceration of our Black men is evident, especially in racist states like Texas. We can not allow Ward’s punishment to go unchallenged.

Source

America’s Corrupt Justice System: Federal Private Prison Populations Grew by 784% in 10 Year Span

25 May

private prisons map

By David Harris-Gershon (@David_EHG)

From 1999-2010, the total U.S. prison population rose 18 percent, an increase largely reflected by the “drug war” and stringent sentencing guidelines, such as three strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences.

However, total private prison populations exploded fivefold during this same time period, with federal private prison populations rising by 784 percent (as seen in the chart below complied by The Sentencing Project):

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This stark rise in private prison populations is partially due to increased contracts granted at the state and federal levels to behemoth prison companies such as Correction Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group. These companies claim - against available data - that they can run corrections facilities at lower costs.

However, whether such companies can save governments money is not the central issue. What’s at issue here is the corrupt, immoral dynamic that fuels such contracts: the concept of treating inmates as commodities that must be grown for profit.

Take, for example, the offer CCA made in 2012 to 48 states:

We’ll purchase and manage your jails, and in return you [the state] must promise to keep the jails at least 90 percent full.

Such contracts provide incentives for local law enforcement to increase incarceration rates, rather than decrease them. In some instances, private prisons are grown not because crime increases, but because police harvest criminals as though they are a crop that must be stocked on the local shelves.

Additionally, for-profit prison companies engage in intense lobbying efforts that have been tied to many of our nation’s most stringent sentencing guidelines, and lobby hard against the decriminalization of things such as marijuana.

The financial motive to engage in such lobbying was clearly detailed in CCA’s 2010 Annual Report (as prepared by The Sentencing Project):

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Such financial incentives to stock corrections facilities naturally leads to widespread corruption. Evidence of such corruption surfaced when two Pennsylvania judges were found guilty of selling juveniles to private detention facilities for millions of dollars. The “kids for cash” scandal, in which innocent children who should not have been locked up were sold for set amounts to the detention facilities, is shocking and harrowing.

However, even more shocking and harrowing is the fact that we have allowed free market pursuits to infiltrate our system of justice, making such scandals possible. When prisoners become products, we no longer have a justice system. We have an illicit marketplace. We have a corral.

America has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world. And the private prison industry is a central driving force behind this. Add to this the staggering number of African-Americans locked up, and the private prison industry has essentially created a modern-day slave trade.

A trade that should never have been allowed to enter our criminal justice system in the first place.

Source

“Don’t interact, don’t talk, they are not humans” – Gitmo guard’s basic orders

23 May
Detainees participate in an early morning prayer session at Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base (Reuters / Deborah Gembara)

Detainees participate in an early morning prayer session at Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base (Reuters / Deborah Gembara)

One of the methods used to extract information from Muslim inmates in Guantanamo was to apply sexual interrogation techniques, Terry Holdbrooks, former guard at the camp has told RT.

Such a degradation methods, the former US soldier said, were used on innocent men. Holdbrooks, who wrote a book about GITMO prisoners, claims that it is the inmates’ religious perseverance in the face of pain and humiliation made him convinced that US was not fighting for the right cause.

Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike.

RT: What did you experience at the detention camp that changed you?

Terry Holdbrooks: To be honest with you I would not even know where to begin with that. Initially seeing religion practiced the way that the detainees practice Islam is a really life changing experience in itself. I have not really seen any kind of any serious devotion, the faith like that growing up in the US.

The torture and information extraction methods that we used certainly created a great deal of doubt and questions in my mind to whether or not this was my America. But when I thought about what we were doing there and how we go about doing it, it did not seem like the America I signed up to defend. It did not seem like the America I grew up in, I grew to believe in. And that in itself was a very disillusioning experience. There was a great deal of personal growth that took there as well.

RT: Could you describe the relationship between the guards and detainees at Guantanamo back when you were serving (and how has it changed since then)?

TH: I suppose that if we’re going to take a stroll down the memory lane, Brandon Neely was there first. He was there when it was camp x-ray. It was essentially dog cages, nothing more. It was dog kennels, I suppose you can say. When I was there camp Delta was in full swing. Delta housed about 612 men that would be the general population of the camps.

RT: Were you given any orders as how to treat the inmates?

TH: Our interaction with the detainees was such that we were told not to talk to them, not to treat them as humans, to not engage in conversation with them whatsoever. And the army sort of made a mistake by allowing somebody who is inclined to sociology and to studying people by leaving me with individuals from all over the world unsupervised for eight hours. I was very low in rank so I was delegated all the work, while those who were higher in rank were sitting in the air-conditioned shacks, nurturing their hangovers. So the instructions I was given were simple – don’t interact, don’t talk, they are not humans.

RT: There have been reports of torture and other human rights violations happening at the prison camp. Could you tell us what you saw?

TH: We can begin with experiences I had the pleasure of having. Myself, Eric Sarr and another Guantanamo guard were involved in this. Eric was a linguist and he was working with an interrogator.

We took the detainee into interrogation and throughout the interrogation the interrogator took off her clothing. She essentially gave the detainee a lap dance, tried to arouse him and then let him believe that he had menstrual blood on him. We then took the detainee back to his cell and were told that he was not allowed to have shower privileges nor fresh water for days. The idea behind this being that if he could not clean himself he would not be able to pray, if he could not pray, he could not practice Islam. Essentially it was an idea to break him down spiritually.

Omar Khadr and a number of other detainees, I remember hearing just few moments ago Shaker Aamer, they were privileged to something we called the frequent flyer program, where we would essentially move them every two hours. Whether we were moving them from camp Delta to camp Echo or moving them from Bravo block to Charlie block, be it a little move or a big move, the idea is that every two hours they would be moved and they would not be able to sleep. This was essentially to wear down their psyche and make them more probable to give out their information during interrogation. 

But what has questioned me ever since I first saw it, it seemed that most of these men were innocent and as numbers are starting to show, we’ve sent over 600 of them home, so they must have been innocent; if we knew that we were purchasing men that were innocent, why were we trying to interrogate innocent men? What were we hoping to get from them?

Some of the tactics I saw practiced in Guantanamo, I just want to never want to relive again and then a great deal of regret takes place and then I did not take the most productive use of some years after Guantanamo. I tried to drown away some of those memories and that is something you cannot do. You have to confront it.

Source

In Colorado, Blacks Make Up 4 Percent Of The Population And 100 Percent Of Death Row

21 May

death-penalty3-300x220By Nicole Flatow

In March, Colorado came close to becoming the 19th state to abolish the death penalty, but the bill failed after Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) voiced opposition and suggested a possible veto. A few months later, Colorado’s death penalty is still firmly in place, and the state is poised to complete what would be only the second execution in 45 years (the last was in 1997). Few dispute that Nathan Dunlap committed a horrific crime and murdered several people at a Chuck E. Cheese. But judges, university professors, and other prominent state leaders are urging Gov. Hickenlooper to commute Dunlap’s sentence, both because crucial errors that defined his trial may have led him to get a harsher sentence than others, and because killing anyone under the perverted state system would be a miscarriage of justice. According to letters filed with Hickenlooper’s office:

  • All three people on death row are black men. In a state that is only 4.3% African American, Colorado’s death row is 100% African American.
  • All three men on death are from the same one county, out of Colorado’s 64.
  • All three men committed their crime when they were under the age of 21.
  • Two law professors who studied Colorado’s application of the death penalty concluded it was unconstitutional, after finding that prosecutors pursue the death penalty in less than one percent of the cases where it is an option, and that the state failed to set “clear statutory standards for distinguishing between the few who are executed and the many who commit murder.”

“It appears that race, geography and youth largely determines who gets the death penalty in Colorado,” wrote a group of NAACP leaders in a letter urging Gov. Hickenlooper to grant clemency. They note that not a single black juror served on the panel that sentenced Dunlap to death.

In addition to the injustices that define the Colorado system, a group of former Colorado judges also point out that Dunlap’s bipolar disorder and psychotic tendencies were not even mentioned at trial. In fact, according to their letter, Dunlap’s lawyer told the jury that there was no explanation for his violence.

The judges add that “no clear evidence exists that the death penalty deters violent crime. What it does in our current system, as in this case, is to drain our judicial system of millions of dollars as mandatory appeals drag on for decades.” Studies have shown that the death penalty does not lower the homicide rate. In fact, the murder rate is lower in states without the death penalty. Hickenlooper says he continues to wrestle with the death penalty, and whether to commute Dunlap’s sentence.

Source

The Cult of the State: What The Kent State Massacre Anniversary Should Teach Us

6 May

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The posting of this article does not imply endorsement of the views of the author.

— The Red Phoenix Editorial Board.

by Michael Suede

(May 4, 2012) – Today is the anniversary of the Kent State shootings by the Ohio National Guard.  The shootings should serve as a reminder to us of what underlies all political processes: violence.  The political process should more aptly be named the process of violent imposition, because any edict, no matter how small or inconsequential, is ultimately enforced with the threat of death.

If you receive a parking ticket, and you feel it is unjust so you refuse to pay it, eventually a bench warrant will be issued for your arrest.  Should you resist arrest, the arresting officer will escalate his use of force up to the point of killing you.

If you refuse to fight a foreign war of aggression against your consent through the imposition of a draft, an arrest warrant will be issued for your arrest.   Should you resist arrest, the arresting officer will escalate his use of force up to the point of killing you.

No matter what the law, it always carries the ultimate threat of death for continued disobedience.  Any resistance to the state is always met with violent force.  Any escalation of resistance is always ultimately met with lethal force.  All projects, laws and bureaucracies created by the state are funded through the threat of violent force.

The Kent State shootings, in which no National Guardsmen were charged with any wrong doing, after killing several unarmed girls and boys that were hundreds of feet away from them, is a symptom of a disease called the state.  Because violence underlies everything the state does, it is impossible to “fix” the state or correct it to be some kind of benevolent force for good.  As Milton Friedman used to say, the badness of means will ultimately corrupt the goodness of intentions.  It is simply not possible to do “good” without doing equal “bad” as far as the political process is concerned.

Even now, you do not have a choice about paying for Predator drones that fly around killing innocent women and children.  Should you refuse to pay for this, you will be thrown into a cage.  Not only will you be thrown into a cage, but society as a whole will demonize you as being greedy.  You will not be able to find work once you have been released from your cage.  You will not be allowed to defend yourself with a gun once you are released from your cage.  You will not be allowed to vote once you are released from your cage.  You will probably have a hard time simply getting by – all because you didn’t want to pay for child killings.

Yet so many still believe in the process.  So many have been brainwashed to ignore the horrors of what the process creates because they continue to buy into the delusion that violence can be used for the greater good if only the “right” people are put into positions of power, if only the “right” laws were to be passed.

The present condition of our society will deteriorate into chaos as the monetary system implodes and the state attempts to maintain its power.   You should not fear this, for it is a process that is natural and necessary for the evolution of humanity.  Nature inherently forces man to confront his mistakes and provides him the opportunity to get it right.  Getting it “right” involves love and compassion.  Getting it “right” means rejecting the use of force to organize society.  Getting it “right” means voluntary interactions that force us to serve one another at all times.  Getting it “right” means compassion for all people, including tax evaders, tax collectors, heroin addicts, heroin dealers, and everyone else in society.

The rise and fall of the Western Roman Empire took 500 years.  If you were ask a Roman citizen during the height of the empire if they thought it would ever collapse, what do you think their response would be?  The rise and fall of the Soviet Union took a mere 70 years.  How many years do we have left?

The creation of the state will always end in the collapse of a given society.  This process of collapse may take years, decades, or even centuries, but all states always succumb to the bad means upon which they were founded.  Arguing that this is not so does not change the reality of what is.  Reality does not care about theory.  Reality does not care about good intentions.  Reality is what it is, and no amount of violence can stop it or alter the laws that govern it.

We can learn from our past mistakes and reject the use of violence to organize our society, or we can continue down the same path humanity has been on since man first became self-aware.

shooting3Source

FBI adds 65-year-old Black Panther to Most Wanted Terrorists list

5 May
Joanne Chesimard

Joanne Chesimard

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced that Joanne Chesimard has been added to its Most Wanted Terrorists list. Thursday’s bulletin gave Chesimard, a black nationalist, the dubious distinction of being the first woman to be placed on the list.

Chesimard, better known as Assata Shakur, was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army when, on May 2, 1973, she was driving through New Jersey with two others. The car was pulled over for a broken taillight and a gunfight ensued with police. One officer and one man from Shakur’s group were killed. 

Despite being injured, she managed to flee from the scene but was eventually arrested and, in 1977, convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. But in 1979, The New York Times reported, she “escaped from Clinton Correctional Institute for Women after three male visitors drew handguns, kidnapped two guards and seized a prison minibus in order to drive out of the grounds to two getaway cars. They left the guards handcuffed but unharmed.” 

It’s been widely speculated that Shakur was aided in her escape by the Black Liberation Army. William Kunstler, her trial lawyer, told reporters at the time that Shakur’s health had declined in prison.

“I was very happy that she escaped because I thought she was unfairly tried,” he said, as quoted by the Gothamist. 

Her surviving accomplice, Sundiata Acoli, born Clark Edward Squire, is still held in a federal prison after being denied parole several times. 

In 1984 Shakur was granted asylum by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who called the charges against her “an infamous lie.” Originally from the Queens section of New York City, Shakur explained her situation on her website.

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“My name is Assata (“she who struggles”) Olugbala (“for the people”) Shakur (“the thankful one”), and I am a 20th Century escaped slave,” she wrote. “Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984. I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the US government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one.” 

She went on to admit involvement with the Black Panther Party and described the FBI’s intention to “destroy it and its leaders and activists.” 

Federal and New Jersey law enforcement announced during Thursday’s news conference that they had doubled the reward for information leading to Shakur’s capture from $1 million to $2 million. Along with being the first female named to the list, she is only the second domestic ‘terrorist’ on the list, which was assembled to identify those responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. 

“We would be naïve to think there’s not some communication between her and some of those people she used to run around with today,” said Aaron Ford, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Newark, New Jersey. 

He did not elaborate on the reasoning behind the seemingly sudden decision to add Shakur, now 65 years old, to the list. New Jersey law enforcement has previously campaigned for her extradition, appealing to Pope John Paul II when he traveled to Cuba in 1998.  

State Police superintendent Colonel Rick Fuentes may have shed light on authorities’ reinvigorated motivation to apprehend Shakur, however. 

“To this day, from her safe haven in Cuba, Shakur has been given a pulpit to preach and profess, stirring supporters and groups to mobilize against the United States by any means necessary,” Fuentes said. “We also have reason to believe that she has established association with other international terrorist organizations.” 

Fuentes did not mention what evidence the New Jersey state police had connecting Fuentes to international terror syndicates, but Ford was careful to note that the US – still struggling to reform its relationship with Cuba – has little hope the country will comply with American requests. 

“Currently it’s not good,” Ford said during the press event. “We don’t enjoy a great extradition status with that country.”

Source

Guantanamo Attorney Found Dead in Apparent Suicide

3 May
A guard tower overlooks the prison at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on June 8, 2010. (Photo: Richard Perry / The New York Times)

A guard tower overlooks the prison at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on June 8, 2010. (Photo: Richard Perry / The New York Times)

By Jason Leopold

An attorney who represented prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay was found dead last week in what sources said was a suicide.

Andy P. Hart, 38, a federal public defender in Toledo, Ohio, apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Hart left behind a suicide note and a thumb drive, believed to contain his case files. It is unknown where Hart died, what the suicide note said or whether an autopsy was performed.

Hart’s death comes amid escalating chaos that has engulfed Guantanamo over the past three months—from a mass hunger strike to military commissions and renewed pressure on the White House to shut down the prison facility. Hart was one of three-dozen Guantanamo attorneys who signed a letter in March urging Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to take immediate action and bring about an end to the hunger strike.

Because Hart was a federal employee working on sensitive legal issues the FBI was contacted about his death. It is unknown if the agency has been investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.

Neither the FBI nor local law enforcement officials in Toledo, Ohio returned calls for comment. A phone number listed for Hart was disconnected Wednesday.

UPDATE: On Thursday, FBI Special Agent Vicki Anderson, a spokeswoman at the bureau’s Cleveland field office, told Truthout the FBI received a “courtesy call” about Hart’s death late last Thursday evening. Anderson said that was the extent of the FBI’s involvement.

Truthout learned about the details of Hart’s death Wednesday from an investigator who has been tapped by attorneys to work on a number of cases involving Guantanamo prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions. The investigator requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

Dennis Terez, the top federal public defender in the Northern District of Ohio, where Hart worked, declined to comment on his colleague’s death.

“At this time and out of respect for Mr. Hart’s family and friends, we have no comment,” Terez said.

Hart’s name has since been removed from the federal public defender’s website.

Hart worked closely with attorney Carlos Warner, who was based out of the federal public defender’s Akron, Ohio office. Warner referred requests for comment about Hart to Terez.

With Warner, Hart was assigned by the government to defend Mohammed Rahim al-Afghani, who was detained by the CIA and allegedly subjected to torture methods until his transfer to Guantanamo in March 2008. The government maintained that al-Afghani was Osama bin Laden’s translator and a top al-Qaida official.

Hart also represented Saudi Khalid Saad Mohammed, who was transferred back to Saudi Arabia from Guantanamo in 2009. He was also the attorney for Adel Hakeemy, a Tunisian who has been detained at Guantanamo for 11 years.

The Guantanamo prisoners he represents have not yet been notified about Hart’s death, according to the investigator.

In addition to defending Guantanamo prisoners, Hart also was the defense attorney for Richard Schmidt, an alleged white supremacist and convicted felon who was under federal investigation over allegations he amassed high-powered weapons and ammunition.

In 2011, Hart was assigned to represent Jeff Boyd Levenderis, 54, who was indicted by a federal grand jury on suspicion of concealing a biological toxin, ricin, and making false statements to federal investigators. Hart was also co-defense counsel for Joshua Stafford, 23, one of five men associated with Occupy Cleveland who were accused of plotting to blow up the Ohio 82 bridge over the Cuyahoga River with fake explosives supplied by an undercover FBI agent. Stafford is due to stand trial in June. It’s unclear if Hart’s death will have any impact on Stafford’s prosecution.

Recently, it was announced Hart’s entire office would face furloughs as part of the sequestration.

An 11-year-old daughter survives Hart.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Source

Celebrate International Workers’ Day 2013!

1 May

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Today we celebrate May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, a holiday celebrated by working people worldwide.

This day began in commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, where police fired upon workers striking for an eight-hour-day. Since then it has become a global celebration of the labor union movement as well as the economic and social gains made by workers.

Without labor, nothing is built, nothing prospers, nothing grows. Wealth, culture, technology, food, furniture, cars, houses, monuments—the workers have made all these things. All development since the beginning of history has been the result of human labor. The first historical act by a human being was production.

Despite this, this continual talk about the nonexistent “middle class” coming from the television has caused a loss of class identity among the American people. We live in an age where the phrase “working class” is a smear.

Let us create and consolidate organizations of workers to continue the legacy of May Day. The workers in every country, including America, must combat layoffs and rising unemployment while fighting for better working conditions, social and political rights, respect, a living wage and social support for the basic needs of other workers. Through its actions the working class is able to paving the way for the revolutionary transformation of the whole society.

Let us make May Day, 2013 a day to reinforce our revolutionary and independent spirit through unity and struggle. The age of working people having pride and self-confidence has begun!

127 years of May Day!

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MAY DAY IN CHICAGO

It was a sunny and unseasonably warm day in Chicago last Wednesday as upwards of 5,000 people through the downtown streets in celebration of May Day and in order to demand immigrant rights and an end to forcible deportations.

Organized by the Chicago May Day Coalition, an alliance spearheaded by several Latino, immigrant’s rights, and labor organizations; and including a number of religious and social justice groups, the 2013 May Day March and Rally was the latest in a series of May Day events in Chicago which, not only commemorate the sacrifice and the legacy of the Haymarket Martyrs; but, also strongly focus on immigrant workers’ rights and struggles. The largest and most successful of the annual marches was the 2006 march when an estimated one million workers of all nationalities marched across town and gathered in the Loop to demand an end to the deportation of immigrant workers.

This year’s May Day Coalition had issued the following statement (in Spanish and English) before the march:

Primero de Mayo – May Day
Día Internacional de los Trabajadores -
International Workers Day

Los trabajadores inmigrantes en Chicago lucharon en 1886 por la jornada de 8 horas de trabajo.
Los trabajadores inmigrantes derrotamos en 2006 la propuesta del Partido Republicano de volver un crimen federal no tener papeles en Estados Unidos.
¡Este año, los trabajadores inmigrantes tenemos que conseguir la ¡LEGALIZACION DE TODOS los indocumentados y tenemos que PARAR LAS REDADAS!

¡YA ES HORA!

El Primero de Mayo de 2013, Día Internacional de los Trabajadores, ningún trabajador internacional debe trabajar; ¡VAMOS TODOS A MARCHAR!
Vamos a marchar por la legalización, contra el cierre de las escuelas públicas, por el aumento del salario mínimo; vamos a marchar con los sindicatos, con las organizaciones de barrio, con los clubes de oriundos.
La cita es el miércoles Primero de Mayo en el Parque Unión (Ashland y Lake), a las 2 de la tarde, para comenzar a marchar a las 3 de la tarde a la Plaza Federal (Jackson y LaSalle). Mítin en la Plaza Federal a las 4 y media de la tarde.

May Day – International Workers Day

Immigrant workers in Chicago fought in 1886 for the 8 hour workday. We won!
Immigrant workers in 2006 fought against Jim Sensenbrenner’s bill to make a federal crime t olive in the United States without immigration papers. We Won!
This year, immigrant workers have to win LEGALIZATION FOR ALL and we have to STOP DEPORTATIONS!

This Is The Time!

On May Day 2013, International Workers Day, No International Worker will go to Work… WE WILL ALL MARCH FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM!
We will march for legalization for all International workers in the US; we will march against public schools closings; we will march to raise the minimum wage; we will march with the labor unions, with community and neighborhood organizations, with hometown associations.
We will meet on Wednesday, May First, at Union Park (Ashland and Lake), at 2 pm, and we will march at 3 pm to Federal Plaza (Jackson and LaSalle). Rally at Federal Plaza at 4:30 pm.

The march itself was energetic, but generally peaceful – according to official sources only a handful of arrests were made. Although the strongest demand voiced at that the march was for an end to deportations, and for full legalization of undocumented workers, slogans addressing various issues such as the Chicago School closings, police violence, and the ongoing war in Afghanistan and US intervention in the Middle East were also raised. At the conclusion of the march, a mass rally was held at Daley Plaza which featured addresses by immigrant’s rights and labor representatives, and US Senator Dick Durbin (D).

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Gitmo is Killing Me

26 Apr

0415OPEDrota-popupGUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

I am still being force-fed. Two times a day they tie me to a chair in my cell. My arms, legs and head are strapped down. I never know when they will come. Sometimes they come during the night, as late as 11 p.m., when I’m sleeping.

There are so many of us on hunger strike now that there aren’t enough qualified medical staff members to carry out the force-feedings; nothing is happening at regular intervals. They are feeding people around the clock just to keep up.

During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual, because she was doing things so hastily. I called the interpreter to ask the doctor if the procedure was being done correctly or not.

It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused to stop feeding me. As they were finishing, some of the “food” spilled on my clothes. I asked them to change my clothes, but the guard refused to allow me to hold on to this last shred of my dignity.

When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.

The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one.

I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and Yemen’s president do something, that is what I risk every day.

Where is my government? I will submit to any “security measures” they want in order to go home, even though they are totally unnecessary.

I will agree to whatever it takes in order to be free. I am now 35. All I want is to see my family again and to start a family of my own.

The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply. At least 40 people here are on a hunger strike. People are fainting with exhaustion every day. I have vomited blood.

And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made.

I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.

Source

Obama Signs 2013 NDAA, Blocking Closure of Gitmo

25 Apr

Guantanamo

Obama initially threatened a veto, but instead signed it into law with a vague proviso

by John Glaser
President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law the $633 billion defense authorization bill despite provisions that block any attempt to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and try detainees on US soil.
The 2013 NDAA authorizes funding for the war in Afghanistan, tightens sanctions against Iran, funds special forces, and boosts security at diplomatic posts abroad following the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in September, among many other things.

But the 680-page bill also renews the prohibition against transferring terror detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba to the United States for any purpose, a measure which again prevents Obama from fulfilling his pledge to close the black hole detention center.

Obama initially threatened a veto of the bill due to this provision, but the threat proved a false one. In a signing statement, Obama said he disagreed with the provision, despite his signing it into law.

“I continue to oppose this provision, which substitutes the Congress’s blanket political determination for careful and fact-based determinations, made by counterterrorism and law enforcement professionals, of when and where to prosecute Guantanamo detainees,” Obama wrote.

“This provision would, under certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles. In the event that these statutory restrictions operate in a manner that violates constitutional separation of powers principles, my administration will implement them in a manner that avoids the constitutional conflict,” the President added.

But human rights groups criticized Obama’s surrender.

“It’s not encouraging that the President continues to be willing to tie his own hands when it comes to closing Guantanamo,” Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First told AFP.

“The injustice of Guantanamo continues to serve as a stain on American global leadership on human rights,” he added.

Frank Jannuzi, Deputy Executive Director of Amnesty International USA warned that “solutions for ending human rights violations, not excuses, must be found.”

“This law makes it harder for the President to fulfill his promise to close the Guantanamo detention facility, perpetuating a grave injustice against the detainees held without charge or fair trial,” he said.

Source

Gitmo hunger strike on rise, 15 prisoners force-fed

17 Apr
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (AFP Photo / John Moore)

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (AFP Photo / John Moore)

Days after violent clashes between guards and prisoners, the US military says a hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay is on the rise as the number of those fasting has increased from 45 to 52. Some 15 prisoners are being force-fed.

Gitmo spokesman Navy Capt. Robert Durand said the number of prisoners classified as hunger strikers has increased in just one day.

At the same time, lawyers for Guantanamo inmates say the strike is more widespread than the military acknowledges and the majority of all 166 prisoners are fasting.

Meanwhile, senior military officials at the Guantanamo Bay detention center defended a raid on Saturday that resulted in a violent clash with detainees. Two US soldiers received head wounds and five prisoners suffered assorted injuries.

Lawyers for the inmates claim they are barred from speaking with their clients.

The atmosphere is tense as a weeks-long hunger strike by detainees protesting their indefinite detention continues.

Soldiers equipped with riot gear swept into a recreation area and were met with resistance from several dozen prisoners, the commander of the detention center told journalists visiting Guantanamo Bay detention facility (Gitmo).

“The appropriate amount of force was used for the situation,” Navy Rear Adm. John W. Smith, commander of the detention center, told the small group of reporters.

Guards carried out a raid on Camp 6 because the prisoners had repeatedly blocked 147 of the 160 security cameras, making it impossible to monitor the detainees during the hunger strike, the AP article said.

Smith said the guards were concerned a prisoner might try to commit suicide. Officials said there were two attempted suicides since the first broke out around February 6.

Shortly before the raid, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had conducted a visit to Gitmo, after which it confirmed that force-feeding is occurring at the facility, a practice that the ICRC and groups like Physicians for Human Rights condemn.

Reuters / Bob Strong

Reuters / Bob Strong

The Pentagon has countered the argument, saying it wouldn’t be humane to let an inmate die from starvation. Detainees who are force-fed are strapped down to a gurney while a tube is forced up their nose and into the esophagus.

A New York Times op-ed written by a Guantanamo prisoner on Monday described the process as extremely painful.

“There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach,” Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel wrote.

“I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.” News of the prison clash surfaced as the US military is conducting closed door tribunals, which have been marred from the start by controversy.

Lawyers for the detainees have criticized the use of listening devices planted in the cells designed to eavesdrop on private conversations between the prisoners and their military legal counsel. The court itself has complained of testimony from the defendants being cut off in mid-sentence by unknown sources.

The list of obstructions to achieving some semblance of justice, never an easy thing in a military tribunal to begin with, threatens to turn the tribunals into a kangaroo court.

“Defense emails have ended up being provided to the prosecution, material has disappeared off the defense server, and sometimes reappeared, in different formats, or with different names,” Rick Kammen, a lawyer for Abd Al Rahim Al Nashiri, who is accused of plotting the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, said, as quoted by the public interest website, ProPublica.

Reuters / Stringer

Reuters / Stringer

The legal defenders said they were unsure whether the emails were intentionally grabbed or collected erroneously due to “technical or procedural errors.” Meanwhile, a Guantanamo Bay lawyer who represents 11 detainees was denied an emergency call to communicate with one of his clients on Tuesday, an email obtained by Rolling Stone reveals.

Defense attorney Carlos Warner requested an emergency call with his client, Fayiz Muhammad Ahmed al Kandari, on Monday morning and received notice that his request had been denied Tuesday afternoon. The Pentagon’s refusal to grant Warner’s call comes just days after US forces raided the communal prison unit at Gitmo.

“The military is closing ranks and restricting access to clients,” Warner said in an email to reporters.

“They don’t want the public to know what happened during its raid.” Warner was told he could re-apply and give the normal 15 days notice – a procedure he said he understood was “routinely not followed,”though this was his first request to place an emergency call.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the allegations.

Following the clash, military authorities decided to terminate communal housing, which permitted detainees to eat and associate together, and place the prisoners into solitary cells.

Reuters / Stringer

Reuters / Stringer

Although journalists are forbidden to speak with the prisoners, one of the detainees had managed to display a crudely scrawled message in broken English that read:

“Stop torturing us. Stop desecrating our religion.” Commander Smith said the prisoners may later be permitted to return to the communal detention areas if they complied with prison rules.

Meanwhile, the hunger strike continues, with 45 prisoners refusing meals and 13 being force fed, officials said.

Reuters / Michelle Shephard

Reuters / Michelle Shephard

Source

US Govt starts notifying Gitmo inmates’ lawyers of force-feeding

12 Apr
The exterior of Camp Delta is seen at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, March 6, 2013. (Reuters)

The exterior of Camp Delta is seen at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, March 6, 2013. (Reuters)

The US leadership has begun naming those Guantanamo prisoners who are being force-fed to stop them from starving to death. The prisoner hunger strike at the facility has been ongoing for two months.

A lawyer for Yemeni inmate Samir Mukbel told AP she had been notified by the Department of Justice last week that her client was being fed against his will. On Monday, she was allowed to speak with the prisoner over the phone, and confirmed the Department’s report.

The inmate reportedly told her that he joined the hunger strike in February, has lost over 10 kilograms in weight, and fainted at one point and had to be taken to hospital. He described the feeding process as painful.

“Some people have gone through this a lot but he said he had never felt anything like it in his life,” lawyer Cori Crider pointed out.

Prison’s spokesperson Robert Durand said he was aware the government was notifying lawyers whose clients were being force-fed, though he did not know the reason for the change.

The news comes after the Department of Justice repeatedly refused to comment to RT about the hunger strike through the end of March.

“The Defense Department oversees the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and is responsible for its operations – not the Justice Department.  I suggest you reach out to the Defense Department office of public affairs for any interview regarding the status of detainees at Guantanamo Bay,” the Department’s spokesperson wrote in an email.

The latest hunger strike began on February 6 in protest against a halt in prisoner releases ordered by President Barack Obama, and the tightening of restrictions inside the notorious facility.

Most of the 166 inmates were participating in the hunger strike, the prisoners’ lawyers indicated, while the facility’s spokesperson indicated to RT that 41 inmates were classified as hunger strikers, with none of them currently in hospital.

Source

Immigrants Held in Solitary Cells, Often for Weeks

8 Apr
A cell for recreation at the Pinal County Jail in Florence, Ariz., where immigrant detainees may get an hour a day to pace.

A cell for recreation at the Pinal County Jail in Florence, Ariz., where immigrant detainees may get an hour a day to pace.

WASHINGTON — On any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities that make up the sprawling patchwork of holding centers nationwide overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to new federal data.

Nearly half are isolated for 15 days or more, the point at which psychiatric experts say they are at risk for severe mental harm, with about 35 detainees kept for more than 75 days.

While the records do not indicate why immigrants were put in solitary, an adviser who helped the immigration agency review the numbers estimated that two-thirds of the cases involved disciplinary infractions like breaking rules, talking back to guards or getting into fights. Immigrants were also regularly isolated because they were viewed as a threat to other detainees or personnel or for protective purposes when the immigrant was gay or mentally ill.

The United States has come under sharp criticism at home and abroad for relying on solitary confinement in its prisons more than any other democratic nation in the world. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement places only about 1 percent of its jailed immigrants in solitary, this practice is nonetheless startling because those detainees are being held on civil, not criminal, charges. As such, they are not supposed to be punished; they are simply confined to ensure that they appear for administrative hearings.

After federal immigration authorities caught up with him, Rashed BinRashed, an illegal arrival from Yemen, was sent to a detention center in Juneau, Wis. He was put in solitary confinement, he says, after declining to go to the jail’s eating area and refusing meals because he wanted to fast during Ramadan.

Federal officials confined Delfino Quiroz, a gay immigrant from Mexico, in solitary for four months in 2010, saying it was for his own protection, he recalls. He sank into a deep depression as he overheard three inmates attempt suicide. “Please, God,” he remembers praying, “don’t let me be the same.”

As lawmakers in Washington consider an overhaul of the immigration system, Congress faces thorny questions not just about what status to grant immigrants already in the country, but also about how best to increase enforcement efforts and what rights to ensure illegal immigrants during their detention.

The new federal data highlights how punitive and costly immigration policy has become, since solitary is one of the most expensive forms of detention.

“I.C.E. is clearly using excessive force, since these are civil detentions,” said Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist who studies solitary confinement at the Wright Institute, a graduate school in psychology based in Berkeley, Calif. “And that makes this a human rights abuse.”

Ernestine Fobbs, an agency spokeswoman, said that aside from immigrants who are separated from the general population for disciplinary reasons, detainees are isolated only “as a final resort, when other options are not available to address the specifics of the situation.”

“I.C.E. takes the mental health care of individuals in the agency’s custody very seriously,” she added. The agency declined to talk about particular cases, citing privacy concerns.

Another agency official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, emphasized that some detainees who are put in “segregation units” have criminal records, gang affiliations or histories of violence.

“It’s an extreme situation,” the official said. “We want to make sure not to overuse it.”

While the conditions of confinement vary, detainees in solitary are routinely kept alone for 22 to 23 hours per day, sometimes in windowless 6-foot-by-13-foot cells, according to interviews with current and former detainees and a review of case records involving more than three dozen immigrants since 2010.

Access to phones and lawyers is far more restricted in solitary; occasionally such communications were permitted only in the middle of the night when it was unlikely anyone would be available. Immigrants are typically given an hour or so of recreation each day, detainees said. In some facilities, that is limited to pacing in what detainees call “the cage,” a sparse indoor enclosure with concrete floors and fencing on all sides, similar to an indoor dog kennel.

The federal data, which officials began reviewing a year ago at the request of immigration lawyers, offers the first public snapshot of the number of immigrants held in solitary confinement, how long they were there and how many had mental health problems — about 10 percent. The 50 facilities that were reviewed by the agency over a five-month period hold about 85 percent of the agency’s average daily population of 34,000 detainees.

The tallies provided by the immigration agency are probably low because many of the detention centers failed to report segregation statistics during some weeks of the review, and some did not include mental health cases in their tallies.

The immigration official who requested anonymity said the agency closely monitors conditions to ensure that isolation practices adhere to agency guidelines, including regular reviews of the solitary cases and visits by medical professionals.

In exit interviews and case documents, immigrant detainees describe varying reasons for being sent to solitary. At Pinal County, Ariz., for example, a detainee reported being sent to solitary for nearly three months after allegedly arguing with a guard. He said guards denied his request for a video review of the situation before sentencing him to solitary. Another detainee in Sherburne County, Minn., said she was isolated after guards found some peanut butter and a Kool-Aid packet in a bag in her cell, a violation of the rules.

Agency officials say that they are limited in their ability to use ankle bracelets and other alternatives to detaining immigrants in its 250 jails, private prisons and other facilities.

The agency pays an average of $122 per day for each immigrant it detains. The agency does not track the cost of solitary confinement, but experts say the practice can triple the cost and can be hundreds of times more expensive than alternatives like using electronic ankle bracelets.

As the Obama administration has stepped up enforcement, the immigration detention population has increased; it is up by nearly 85 percent since 2005. When illegal immigrants are detained, they are typically not given sentences with end dates; they are held, sometimes for months, until they voluntarily sign deportation papers or immigration authorities determine whether they can stay or will be deported.

Although the immigration agency’s new guidelines limit the use of solitary to 30 days for each disciplinary infraction, there are exceptions, and such confinement can be indefinite, according to data obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit journalism organization based at American University.

Solitary confinement is widely viewed as the most dangerous way to detain people, and roughly half of prison suicides occur when people are segregated in this way. Deprived of meaningful human contact, otherwise healthy prisoners often become deeply troubled. Paranoia, depression, memory loss and self-mutilation are not uncommon. No data is available on how many of the 18 suicides out of 133 deaths of detained immigrants since 2003 occurred in solitary units.

Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the New York University Center for Health and Human Rights, said that when he interviewed about 70 immigrant detainees a decade or so ago, roughly a quarter said they had been put in solitary at some point and about 40 percent said they had been threatened with it.

Trauma experts say the psychological impact of solitary may be more acute for immigrant detainees because many are victims of human trafficking, domestic violence or sexual assault or have survived persecution and torture in their home countries.

For example, Ronal Rojas-Castro, a Honduran immigrant, was detained for eight months after entering the United States illegally last April. He was caught after being held captive by smugglers for five days with more than 100 other people in a house in Texas near the Mexico border. When one of the immigrants managed to call for help, the immigration agency was alerted, and Mr. Rojas-Castro broke his ankle trying to run away.

He was later caught and put in solitary, he says, because guards said his crutches could be used as a weapon. Mr. Rojas-Castro was kept in complete darkness for four days, wearing only his underwear.

Dr. Kupers, the psychiatrist at the Wright Institute, said: “Immigrants have the worst situation. They have no advocates. Their family is afraid to complain.” Detainees are not automatically represented by legal counsel, and about 85 percent have none.

Mr. BinRashed, the Yemeni detainee, had been in the United States for five years after fleeing his civil-war-ravaged country in 1999. He arrived as an asylum seeker, but was detained in 2005 for having falsely listed his country of origin as Somalia. He was held for nearly three years in immigration detention, but he won his case in court against being deported and now lives in Chicago with his fiancée and her son. He recounted his time in solitary confinement as the most awful experience of his life.

Todd Nehls, the recently retired sheriff of Dodge County, Wis., who ran the detention facility where Mr. BinRashed was held, said in an interview that he did not believe his officers would have placed the detainee on 23-hour lockdown for refusing meals, but that Mr. BinRashed could have been isolated for breaking rules or being argumentative. Mr. Nehls added that he did not recall specifics about the case.

Mr. Quiroz says officers told him he had been placed in solitary for his own protection because he is gay. When he was caught driving drunk in 2010, Mr. Quiroz had been living in the United States waiting for legal status from an application that his father, an American citizen, submitted 12 years earlier.

While his legal status was being determined, Mr. Quiroz was not required to leave the country, but his probation officer handed him over to the immigration agency, which sent him into detention in Houston. Against his objections, Mr. Quiroz, like many other gay, lesbian and transgender detainees, was placed in solitary. He was released from detention in March 2011.

In recent years, pressure has increased to limit the use of solitary in other settings. After a Senate hearing last June, the federal Bureau of Prisons said it planned to review its policies and immediately reduce by about 25 percent the number of prisoners in isolation.

Last year the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, called for a ban on solitary confinement except in limited situations and singled out the United States for its reliance on the method. He recommended a ban on prolonged solitary confinement, meaning longer than 15 days, because, he said, the sensory deprivation may amount to torture. He also called for a ban against isolation for juveniles and those with mental disabilities.

Early this month, he released a report partly focused on the American government’s use of solitary confinement on detained immigrants. “The United States,” he said in an interview, “is in breach of its obligations under the torture convention.”

Source

Video: Blackout TV: US media turn blind eye to Gitmo hunger strike

25 Mar

Over 100 Guantanamo inmates ‘on hunger strike,’ possibly in grave condition

17 Mar
Image by US military: two members of the military walking out of the 'Camp Six' detention facility of the Joint Detention Group at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (AFP Photo/Jim Watson)

Image by US military: two members of the military walking out of the ‘Camp Six’ detention facility of the Joint Detention Group at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (AFP Photo/Jim Watson)

Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay inmates have claimed “all but a few men” are on a hunger strike over their Qurans being taken away. The condition of the strikers “appears to be rapidly deteriorating and reaching a potentially critical level,” they said.

Most of 130 people housed in Camp 6 of Guantanamo Bay may be involved in the strike.

“My client and other men have reported that most of the detainees in Camp 6 are on strike, except for a small few who are elderly or sick,” Pardiss Kebriaei, a New York lawyer representing Yemeni detainee Ghaleb Al-Bihanim, told AFP.  Men have reported coughed up blood, lost consciousness and were forced to move to other wings of the facility for observation.

The first reports of the widespread hunger strike in Guantanamo emerged in early March.

The protest was allegedly sparked by interference with the inmates’ personal belongings.

“Since approximately February 6, 2013, camp authorities have been confiscating detainees’ personal items, including blankets, sheets, towels, mats, razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos, religious CDs, and letters, including legal mail; and restricting their exercise, seemingly without provocation or cause,” the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said in a March letter to the US Military.

They added that men’s Qurans were confiscated in a “desecrating” manner, and that prayer time was not respected. Most, if not all, of the Guantanamo detainees come from the Middle East, and are devout Muslims.

This image reviewed by the US military shot through a one way mirror shows a detainee in Cell Block B of the "Camp Six" detention facility of the Joint Detention Group at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, January 19, 2012. (AFP Photo/Jim Watson)

This image reviewed by the US military shot through a one way mirror shows a detainee in Cell Block B of the “Camp Six” detention facility of the Joint Detention Group at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, January 19, 2012. (AFP Photo/Jim Watson)

Prison officials have acknowledged that the hunger strike is taking place. However, they deny that it is a large-scale event: Nine detainees are refusing food, five of whom are being fed through tubes inserted into their stomachs, according to Robert Durand, director of public affairs for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo.

Durand also said that the claims of desecration of the Quran were unfounded.

“To be clear: there have been no incidents of desecration of the Quran by guards or translators, and nothing unusual happened during a routine search for contraband,” he told AFP.

Guantanamo Bay is a US Military prison facility opened on the wake of 9/11, as part of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘War on Terror.’ The prison currently holds 166 people, many of whom have spent over a decade there without official charges brought against them. Washington has alleged the inmates are terrorists who plotted or acted against the American people. Guantanamo Bay became a source of heated public debate after it was revealed that US forces had tortured detainees.

Barack Obama promised to close the facility at the beginning of his first term as president, but the facility remains open.

Source

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