Folder: Justice Education
Unreasonable detentions
See also: America's Secret Military Tribunals.
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Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in US | AI: USA Treatment of war prisoners undermines human rights | Guantanamo Photos Cause Alarm among Human Rights and Prisoners Rights Groups | LAW: Conditions of Israeli Prisons Sub-Human | Thousands of Russian prisoners are still suffering in Gulag Archipelago
Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in US
Axis of Logic: Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in US 05/09/04
By Fox Butterfield
May 8, 2004, 13:48
May 8, 2004 - Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.
In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation.
At Virginia's Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl.
The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.
The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. [more]
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AI: USA Treatment of war prisoners undermines human rights
[Note: Current estimates are that there are more than 600 persons being detained in Guantanamo Bay by the United States without any national, international, and/or fundamental human rights; nor due process and legal representation.]
Amnesty International: USA: Treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay undermines human rights
Despite repeated statements since 11 September that it remains committed to international law and standards, the US Government is failing to match its actions to this rhetoric following the attacks on New York and Washington last year
The organization released today the text of a memorandum sent to the US Government detailing some of the organization's concerns under international law and standards relating to detainees in US custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.
The US government must ensure that all its actions in relation to those in its custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay comply with international law and standards. This is crucial if justice is to be done and seen to be done, and if respect for the rule of law and human rights is not to be undermined.
Amnesty International is also renewing its request for access to the detainees held in Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay, who are due to be transferred later this month to a new facility under construction at the naval base. The organization has had no reply to its initial request made on 22 January.
See also:
About AI
USA: Post 11 September detainees deprived of their basic rights
Rights at Risk: Amnesty International's concerns regarding security legislation and law enforcement measures
Pakistan: Government breaks its own laws to participate in "war against terrorism"
[more]
Amnesty International: USA: Treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay undermines human rights
Despite repeated statements since 11 September that it remains committed to international law and standards, the US Government is failing to match its actions to this rhetoric following the attacks on New York and Washington last year
The organization released today the text of a memorandum sent to the US Government detailing some of the organization's concerns under international law and standards relating to detainees in US custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.
The US government must ensure that all its actions in relation to those in its custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay comply with international law and standards. This is crucial if justice is to be done and seen to be done, and if respect for the rule of law and human rights is not to be undermined.
Amnesty International is also renewing its request for access to the detainees held in Camp X-Ray in Guantánamo Bay, who are due to be transferred later this month to a new facility under construction at the naval base. The organization has had no reply to its initial request made on 22 January.
See also:
About AI
USA: Post 11 September detainees deprived of their basic rights
Rights at Risk: Amnesty International's concerns regarding security legislation and law enforcement measures
Pakistan: Government breaks its own laws to participate in "war against terrorism"
[more]
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Guantanamo Photos Cause Alarm among Human Rights and Prisoners Rights Groups
Sunday, November 10 2002
WASHINGTON (PC) - Last week, images appeared "mysteriously" on the internet, pictures taken from inside an American military C-130, an aircraft that transported prisoners from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay.
The images caused alarm among Human Rights and Prisoner Rights groups, as well as the Pentagon. In response to the release of the images, Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clark stated, "We have very very tight restrictions on any images of the detainees for security purposes and because we have not interest in potentially holding detainees up for any kind of public ridicule."
Rights groups are growing more concerned about breaches of human rights as information leaks out regarding the US conduct in Guantanamo Bay. [snip]
"They kept us in cages like animals," he said, referring to chain-link open-air cells where hundreds of prisoners, mostly Afghans are held. He continued, saying, "We were only allowed out twice per week, for half an hour."
According to the elder, Hajji Faiz Mohammed, the Arabs who were held were treated the worst, because they refused to speak. He said that they would be beaten and tortured so badly, that they would lose consciousness.
Mohammed, like the other two prisoners release also said that they were chained constantly in their cells, and prisoners were not allowed to talk to one another.
[more]
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LAW: Conditions of Israeli Prisons Sub-Human
Friday, May 17 2002 @ 04:45 AM GMT
RAMALLAH: Since March 29, 2002, Israel has launched a new campaign of mass arrests and detention. LAW has visited detainees in a number of detention centers and followed up cases, defending Palestinian detainees before Israeli courts.
There has been an enormous increase in the number of detainees, resulting in serious problems which stem from the inadequacy of existing facilities and conditions in these detention centers are severe. Detainees have complained about the denial of medical care and insufficient sanitation and food.Detainees have also complained about ill- treatment and torture.
In contravention of international law and recognized minimum standards, Palestinians detainees in Ofer detention center, which is located in Betunia in Ramallah, are subject to ill-treatment. LAW's lawyers have visited 'Ofer detention center and spoke to seventeen detainees (their names are available at LAW). The lawyers found that thirteen detainees have been sentenced to 2-6 months in administrative detention. The detainees told LAW that the Israeli authorities have placed forty prisoners in tents that only accommodate twenty persons. Prisoners complained about the lack of food. The sanitation facilities are insufficient. Each forty detainees have to use one bar of soap.
[more]
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Thousands of Russian prisoners are still suffering in Gulag Archipelago
By Michael McCarthy
04 January 2002
Institute of Geographers Conference
Ulster's sectarianism worsens in peaceful times
Ulster: In this divided city, segregation has become a way of life over centuries
Pupils on school run say they prefer to walk
Russia's Gulag Archipelago of prison camps in the far north is still functioning, with prisoners enduring "unacceptable" conditions of winter cold and summer insect bites, the conference was told.
More than 120 "forest colonies" of remote labour camps dating from the Stalin era of political persecution are being used to house tens of thousands of criminals, said Judith Pallot, a geography lecturer at Oxford University.
Reporting on two valleys in the Perm region of the northern Ural mountains, the Kolva and the Berezovaya, Dr Pallot said they containedcompounds ringed by watchtowers on the edge of the forest, They had held prisoners since the Thirties, although the inmates were now typically murderers rather than political dissidents.
The average temperature for the region over the whole year was minus 1C, and during the long winter, from October to May, it fell as low as minus 40C, while in the summer insect bites were "absolute hell", Dr Pallot said. The inmates had been regularly marched into the forest to cut timber before the recent collapse of the local timber market. There were believed to be about 10,000 prisoners in the two valleys.
[more]
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