http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/prison/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:15:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2689/postmark_guantamo/ After the U.S. Senate voted last year to strip Guantánamo detainees of the right to habeas corpus, you'd think it would have dashed the hopes of the desperate prisoners that the world's greatest deliberative body would prove their salvation. But Saifullah Paracha is apparently an eternal optimist. In March, after 18 months in Guantánamo, Paracha, 58, decided to write a letter to 98 U.S. senators describing his plight. The senators haven't responded, though it's hard to blame them. They don't know the letters exist. The Department of Defense won't release them for delivery. "He lived in the United States," says Paracha's lawyer G. T. Hunt. "He's a pro-American person. He believes in American justice. He believes that if he can… Guanatanamo Terrorism Congress Kari Lydersen Tue, 27 Jun 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2706/the_senselessness_of_guantamo/ Chicago Lawyer Joseph Marguiles' Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (Simon & Schuster) is about as convincing an indictment of Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and at least a few dozen civilian and military advisors as can be imagined in an atmosphere of government secrecy. Margulies, who represents some of the men incarcerated within the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, uses his position as an advocate to, well, advocate. But despite any bias he might harbor as a defense lawyer, Margulies has used his unusual access to top-secret operations to write a book that ought to persuade anybody--regardless of political ideology--that Bush has allowed immoral and probably illegal treatment of fellow human beings. Margulies… Guantanamo Civil Liberties Books War on Terror Kari Lydersen Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2730/rechecking_the_balance_of_powers/ The U.S. Supreme Court's June 29 ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld--that the Bush administration's military tribunals violated federal law and the Geneva Conventions--resoundingly rejected the theories of radical executive power that the administration has used to justify a whole array of controversial governmental programs. But for now, it seems that the Bush administration remains intent on defending its actions while doing the minimum to comply with the ruling. In early July, the administration announced that it would amend a previous executive order that denied detainees the protection of the Geneva Conventions. Bush has also sought a congressional rubberstamp for a review of the National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping program. Such halfway measures are efforts to sidestep the failure of the… prison iraq Kari Lydersen Mon, 04 Sep 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2797/follow_the_prison_money_trail/ While New Mexico's landscape may make the state the Land of Enchantment, its rapidly growing rates of incarceration have been utterly disenchanting. What's worse, New Mexico is at the top of the nation's list for privatizing prisons; nearly one-half of the state's prisons and jails are run by corporations. Supposedly, states turn to private companies to cope better with chronic overcrowding and for low-cost management. However, a closer look suggests a different rationale. A recent report from the Montana-based Institute on Money in State Politics reveals that during the 2002 and 2004 election cycles, private prison companies, directors, executives and lobbyists gave $3.3 million to candidates and state political parties across 44 states. According to Edwin Bender, executive director of… economy prisons Kari Lydersen Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2832/end_medical_experimentation_on_prisoners_now/ One of the most powerful movies ever to be made about the Holocaust was the 2003 made-for-TV movie, Out of the Ashes, which highlighted the sickening crucible faced by medical professionals held captive in the Third Reich's torture-and-killing camps. Medical experimentation on Jewish and Roma (Gypsy) women was one of Dr. Josef Mengele's favorite forms of entertainment. In the movie, Dr. Gisella Perl (Christine Lahti) faces an ethical crisis when she is forced to comfort a young pregnant Roma woman and then stand by and watch as Mengele, the Angel of Death, marks up and slices open her stomach without the benefit of anesthesia. Mengele's sadistic detachment as he walks away from the remains of the dead woman and her… medical and health prisons Kari Lydersen Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:01:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2835/tracking_the_cia_torture_flights/ On September 6, President George W. Bush admitted that the United States detains suspected terrorists in secret CIA-run prisons in foreign countries. He announced that 14 individuals previously held in these secret jails had been transferred to the "detention facility" on Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. The president claimed that no other individuals were currently being held at these CIA "black sites," but refused to disclose the location of said jails. "Doing so would provide our enemies with information they could use to take retribution against our allies and harm our country." In their new book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, A.C. Thompson and Trevor Paglen detail how the CIA transports these "detainees" around the globe.… guantanamo criminal justice books war on terror Kari Lydersen Mon, 16 Oct 2006 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2864/abandon_hope_all_who_enter_here/ Moazzam Begg is a second-generation British Muslim. In 2002, he was arrested in Pakistan and held for two years by the United States as an "enemy combatant." Below, he describes his arrival and interrogation in Guantanamo after being held at both Kandahar and Bagram. He was released in 2005, and now lives in Birmingham, England, with his family. Today, Begg can lecture only in Britain because, despite the absence of charges against him, his passport was withdrawn as a condition of his release. He hopes to be able to travel and lecture more widely in the future. It is considered a sin in Islam to despair, but in Bagram, during the worst days of May 2002, I had been unable… Terrorism guatanamo criminal justice military Kari Lydersen Wed, 08 Nov 2006 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2890/lawyers_fight_for_habeas_rights/ Inside the White House, President George W. Bush sat at a small desk. Surrounded by generals, congressmen and members of his administration, he signed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) into law. "It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill he knows will save American lives," he declared. Outside the White House, it was raining. More than 100 religious leaders, survivors of torture and concerned citizens gathered to mourn the passing of a cornerstone of American law. Many of the marchers wore soggy orange jumpsuits and black hoods over their faces, representing the more than 400 men who remain imprisoned at Guantánamo. The gap between the Bush administration's agenda and the concerns of the activists outside could… Civil Liberties Judiciary Guantanamo Kari Lydersen Tue, 16 Jan 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2966/diary_of_a_guantamo_attorney/ I fell into the world of Guantánamo in October 2005. The Chicago Council of Lawyers had organized a luncheon discussion on the legal issues surrounding the infamous detention facility at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba. I received an e-mail thanking me for my attendance (I should have gone but didn't) and asking for volunteers to represent the nearly 200 known unrepresented prisoners at the base. I had assumed that I was well-informed about our criminal president and his assault on the rule of law; it never occurred to me that four years after being captured (and more than one year after the Supreme Court affirmed their right to hearing and counsel) individuals were still being held without legal… guantanamo civil rights Kari Lydersen Wed, 17 Jan 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2982/americas_slave_labor/ U.S. prisoners working for a computer-recycling operation run by Federal Prison Industries (FPI) are being exposed to a toxic cocktail of hazardous chemicals through their prison jobs while efforts by some prison officials to protect them have been met with stonewalling and subterfuge. Since 1994, FPI has used inmates to disassemble electronic waste (e-waste)--the detritus of obsolete computers, televisions and related electronics goods--for recycling. According to a new report, "Toxic Sweatshops"--published jointly by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Center for Environmental Health,** California-based Computer TakeBack Campaign and the Prison Activist Resource Center--the waste contains high levels of arsenic, selenium, mercury, lead, dioxins and beryllium--all considered dangerous by the Environmental Protection Agency. The report follows three years of mounting scrutiny of… labor prison Kari Lydersen Tue, 06 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3015/families_behind_bars/ Named after the co-founder of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the T. Don Hutto Correctional Center in Taylor, Texas, opened as a medium-security prison in 1997. Today, the federal government pays CCA, the nation's largest private prison company, $95 per person per day to house the detainees, who wear jail-type uniforms and live in cells. But they have not been charged with any crimes. In fact, nearly half of its 400 or so residents are children, including infants and toddlers. The inmates are immigrants or children of immigrants who are in deportation proceedings. Many of them are in the process of applying for political asylum, refugees from violence-plagued and impoverished countries like Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Somalia and Palestine.… immigration central america prison Kari Lydersen Mon, 12 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3024/8_reasons_to_close_guantamo_now/ The first detainees arrived in Guantánamo four months to the day after the 9/11 attacks. From the opening of Camp X-Ray--the first site of imprisonment, notorious for its tin-roofed open-air cages--to the recently completed permanent prison known as Camp 6, critics have called for its closure. Even President Bush has said, "I'd like to end Guantánamo. I'd like it to be over with." Yet he refuses to close it because, he says, it holds detainees who "will murder somebody if they are let out on the street." It's time to look at the powerful reasons to close Guantánamo, both the standard ones enumerated below--and also what may be the most compelling, if unspoken, one of all: Guantánamo must be closed… guantanamo prison civil liberties Kari Lydersen Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3023/inside_americas_gulag/ According to the U.S. government, Guantánamo Bay is leased to Uncle Sam by the Cuban government. However, Cuba does not recognize U.S. claims to the Bay and has not accepted lease payments for decades. Therefore, while Guantánamo is officially Cuban territory, it is effectively a fiefdom of the United States military. Guantánamo's bizarre political status makes it a perfect haven for the parallel legal universe the Bush administration has created for "enemy combatants." This parallel legal universe is populated by the likes of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. On January 17, Gonzales shocked the Senate Judiciary Committee with his statement that "the Constitution doesn't say, every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right… civil rights guantanamo prison Kari Lydersen Wed, 14 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3019/interrogations_behind_barbed_wire/ His psychiatrists call it "Groundhog Day." José Padilla--the once-renowned "dirty bomber" who is now little more than a dim light in the government's galaxy of desperadoes--has spent almost five years in solitary confinement. Whenever his lawyers attempt to discuss his case with him, he has the same response, begging them over and over again not to. When they try, his face seizes in tics and his body contorts uncontrollably. "Mr. Padilla may be suffering from some form of brain injury," writes a forensic psychiatrist who evaluated him for his lawyers. His story illuminates what has happened to many prisoners of America's war on terror. In addition to being tormented psychologically, Padilla and other Guantánamo detainees say the U.S. military has… guantanamo prison torture Kari Lydersen Thu, 29 Mar 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3083/reading_harry_potter_in_guantamo/ The prisoners at Guantánamo Bay--or Azkaban, as one of my clients, a Harry Potter fan, calls it--have had no access to a hearing in a court of law. Instead, Guantánamo's inmates are subjected to two kangaroo procedures: Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) and Administrative Review Boards (ARBs). The CSRTs are the tribunals that determine whether an individual is an "enemy combatant." Needless to say, the cards are stacked against the prisoner from the get-go. The tribunals are allowed to rely on hearsay evidence and information acquired though coercion. Any evidence deemed "secret" is withheld from the prisoner. Can you imagine trying to defend yourself against evidence kept secret from you? Amazingly, my client Abdul Al-Ghizzawi (a Libyan national who ran… guantanamo war on terror Kari Lydersen Mon, 02 Apr 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3091/rethinking_lineups/ In the mid-'90s, inspired by a spate of DNA exonerations, academics began to study whether eyewitness identifications using traditional police lineups were less reliable than previously believed and found that a different lineup protocol appeared to be more dependable. So Sheri Mecklenburg, general counsel to the Chicago Police Department, and Ebbe Ebbesen, a psychology professor at the University of California at San Diego, decided to test it. Their one year field study, conducted in three different-sized Illinois cities--Chicago, Evanston and Joliet--was Mecklenburg's idea. As counsel to the police department, she says, "I want them to do the best job they can, and they want to do the best job they can. I'm not against any improvement." However, the Illinois results… criminal justice prison Kari Lydersen Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3101/inside_the_death_chamber/ The following transcript was adapted from "Witness to an Execution," a radio documentary produced by Stacy Abramson and David Isay, which is included in the new book Writing for Their Lives: Death Row USA (University of Illinois Press), edited by Marie Mulvey-Roberts. "Witness to an Execution," which was originally presented on "All Things Considered," won a Peabody Award in 2000. To hear the complete broadcast or see more photographs by Andrew Lichtenstein taken during the making of the documentary, go to SoundPortraits.org. Warden Jim Willett: I'm Jim Willett. I've overseen about 75 executions at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas. I started as a guard here 29 years ago and have been warden since May of 1998. The Walls takes… criminal justice prison Kari Lydersen Tue, 01 May 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3128/the_guantnamo_hunger_strike/ Guantánamo is in the grips of a hunger strike--an age-old form of protest that marked such world events as the fight for women's suffrage and Indian and Irish independence. The U.S. military's response to the hunger strike is not surprising: punitive force-feeding, a dangerous and painful approach. In March I was treated to a grisly demonstration of this procedure at a conference of Guantánamo attorneys in London and Oxford. We also met with members of the British Parliament and ambassadors from our clients' countries of origin (as well as ambassadors of countries that might be willing to offer asylum to former prisoners). But one of the main topics of the discussion was the current hunger strike, which is only now… guantanamo prison war on terror Kari Lydersen Thu, 24 May 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3197/locking_attorneys_out_of_guantnamo/ In recent weeks, disastrous court decisions have set back the cause of the hundreds of men and boys languishing in Guantánamo. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. has ruled that the Military Commissions Act (which strips Guantánamo inmates of habeas corpus rights) is a viable law, and the Supreme Court has told us Guantánamo attorneys that we must work within the framework of the Act before the Court will determine whether it is constitutional. The question before us: Can we salvage any of the miniscule progress we have made in the Guantánamo litigation given these disastrous decisions? The government is using the appellate court decision and the Supreme Court's inaction to try to keep us habeas attorneys away… civil rights guantanamo torture Kari Lydersen Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3226/torture_by_another_name/ On May 15, America was treated to a televised celebration of war, torture and indefinite detention--the South Carolina Republican primary debate. Blending politics with Hollywood, moderator Brit Hume spun a hypothetical question involving the proverbial "ticking time-bomb" scenario. The candidates all tried to out-do each other over who could be trusted to best disregard fundamental constitutional principles. It was close, but the award went to Mitt Romney who declared: "I'm glad they're at Guantánamo. I don't want them on our soil. I want them on Guantánamo, where they don't get the access to lawyers [Mitt: it is our soil and we lawyers are still there.] ... My view is we ought to double Guantánamo ... And enhanced interrogation techniques have… civil rights guantanamo torture Kari Lydersen