Some US prisons are no better than Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay: A recent Zundel letter to his wife, Ingrid Rimland

zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
Tue Apr 4 07:47:45 EDT 2006





Some US prisons are no better than Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay: A 
recent Zundel letter to his wife, Ingrid Rimland

=====


The radio is full of a story about that US GI who terrorized some 
Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib.  With dogs!  He is supposed to get 8 
1/2 years in prison.  I will believe it once I see it enforced.  The 
US has been notoriously lax when it comes to dealing with US war 
crimes. 

But, Ingrid, that means this is one serious crime according to US 
law.  We are talking about US soldiers in war, overseas, siccing 
their dogs on enemy prisoners they deem terrorists. 

How much more serious does it have to be if in a US prison, like in 
Blount County Jail, [individuals] who wore black uniforms, black 
balaclavas, flak jackets and laced, parachutist-like boots, ski face 
masks revealing only their eyes, and helmets with these fiber glass 
visors to boot,  not identifiable to what police or prison service 
these uniformed people belong, [were terrorizing inmates]!  They and 
their dogs were hysterical. They were constantly shouting at us 
prisoners, [who were] lying face down, hands cuffed with Israeli-type 
plastic handcuffs behind our backs.  A dog, about two feet away from 
me, was so vicious and angry that it kept rearing upon its hind legs, 
his paws in the front stabbing in the air, jerking wildly on the 
leash.  It had no muzzle.  I was so close I could see and hear the 
dog's teeth excitedly crash together in an awful sound.  I saw his 
wild eyes and his frothing, drooling mouth.  His spittle dripped on 
the floor next to me;  some hit my arm, my prison uniform, and 
collected on the floor.  There were dog handlers at each end of the 
"range" where about 50 prisoners - all civilians, all Americans - 
were lying on the floor, trussed like turkeys, [who] were being 
terrorized by these dog handlers, much to the amusement of 
black-uniformed women filming us with their handycam video cameras. 
Laughing!!!

Ingrid, the news casts last night triggered something in me that I 
had suppressed in my memory - because you know that I was once 
before, in April 1985, involved in such a traumatic dog attack after 
I was released from Canadian prison after my first conviction.  As I 
was lying on my prison bunk [in Mannheim], it came to me that I had 
the names of two inmates and two lawyers who would have news or 
reports about these inmates being terrorized by these dog handler 
terrorists - that they were not prison guards.  Our guards in 
Tennessee Blount County had totally different, easy to identify 
uniforms!  They were not integrated with those dog teams or those 
women!  They were not from within our prison!  They were outside 
units!  (The weekends when they came with those dog teams were 8 
February and 15 February 2003)

I told you that I shared a cell with a chemical engineer from the 
Knoxville area.  His name was [omitted].  He was the one who 
aggravated the prison guards at all hours of the day and night be 
calling them on the intercom, sometimes at 2 or 3 a.m.  Well, one 
morning early, [guards] stormed into our cell.  I was on the top 
bunk.  They shouted at me to get down, to take my mattress and 
bedding and my miserable few belongings along and to get out of the 
cell.  They dragged this engineer off his bed, threw him on the 
floor, started to punch him randomly while I was trying to get by 
them, wondering about this behavior of US prison guards.  An older, 
mid-fifties Mexican captain by the name of Gonzales, or a name 
similar to it, turned to me and actually apologized, leading me 
outside.  He told me to wait in the large range room where we would 
eat our meals and take our walks.  (I never got one minute's daylight 
or fresh air in the time I was there.)

These six guards, most of them fat, [blubbery] Whites, kept punching 
and kicking that poor screaming guy who was trying to shield himself 
from the kicks and punches.  There was blood on the floor, on the 
wall, on his uniform.  When he no longer defended himself, they 
dragged him by his leg - like they had dragged me to the dog handlers 
- in full view of other prisoners in the next range which was 
separated by a wall with top-to-ceiling wood-framed glass panes.  We 
could see each other;  thus, the other prisoners not only heard the 
screams, saw the pounding, and saw this man dragged out of the range 
all along the floor to some arrest cell, trailing blood, staining the 
floor and the walls up to 5-6 " along the route. 

Since I had extremely high blood pressure, each day I was taken to 
sick bay to have my blood pressure taken.  I was in a long line, 
shackled in thick metal link chains, with padlocks around the waist, 
hands cuffed and feet in cuffs and painfully chained to the other 7-8 
prisoners, as we snaked along those blood-stained floors and walls. 
I met [the engineer inmate] once being led away from the doctor's 
office in the presence of a single guard.  His face was black and 
violet-blue, his eyes were blood-shot.  He shouted to me he was 
sueing the Blount County Jail.  (Š)

There is another witness whom I befriended there.  He was a 22-23 
year old, nice and skilled garage mechanic who had his own shop in 
Maryville.  He was 6-7 weeks away from release at the time - some 
problem with stolen car parts, vehicles etc.  His name was [omitted]; 
he lived with his wife and baby at [omitted].  He will remember me 
well.  I liked him;  he was a decent kid who got into hot water.  He 
would know [the names] of the other inmates.  They were all local - 
car thieves, drivers without licences, drinking while under 
suspension etc.  There would be lots of witnesses to corroborate my 
story. 

There was one chiropracter there, from Sevierville or Pigeon Forge, a 
somewhat greasy type of darker complexion.  He was on the floor, same 
room, trussed like me, on the other side of the range.  Scared like 
everybody!  His name is [omitted] (Š) 

All we need is witnesses to corroborate my story with the dogs!

[Our reporter friend] could blow the lid off a national scandal 
larger than Abu Ghraib if it is handled properly.  It would make that 
man and his paper world famous and help us nail these creeps who 
think they are unreachable.  If a US soldier is already found guilty 
overseas in a war zone, imagine how the media will like this story! 

I will try to send you photocopies out of German newspapers of the 
cells in Abu Ghraib, the dogs, the orange-suited prisoners in 
Guantanamo, the cells there, which were exactly like mine in Thorold 
and in Toronto - Ingrid, down to the yellow-cream color and orange 
T-shirts etc.  Only in Guantanomo, they had better pillows than I 
had! 

What a life for me, Ingrid!  Amazing!

One thing important for [the reporter] to understand is the hostage 
dimension.  Rendition is one crime;  dogs to terrorize prisoners is 
quite another - but to do it in the way it was done and for the 
purposes it was done makes this one of the most callous, in-your-face 
chutzpah crimes these people have pulled off in broad daylight!  It's 
only because our own people on our side of the political spectrum are 
such utter failures and incompetents in utilizing the political 
processes available to us that these people have, so far, gotten away 
with it.  I realize each time I speak to the lawyers what you told me 
years ago - I always thought you were exaggerating - that you had 
never met anyone with a better overview and grip on the situation. 
Only now do I [realize] that you actually were right.  Ingrid, it is 
painful to me to have to be a school master to lecture [people] on 
the international implications and connections - how it all fits 
together.  Why each part in each country fits together in an overall 
pattern and picture.  (Š) 

I am finally beginning to understand what it is that so unnerved 
these people for so long in so many cases and places.  Which also 
means that now that they have their prey in their claws, they are not 
going to let go easily!

But you see?  Every once in a while, issues come up, like this 
soldier [with the dogs], or these US renditions and overflights, 
which will give us a chance [to explain to press people] what really 
are the underlying reasons to what is going on.









What do you think? The t r u t h o u t Town Meeting is in progress. 
Join the debate!

     Go to Original

     9/11 Detainees in New Jersey Say They Were Abused With Dogs
     By Nina Bernstein
     The New York Times

     Monday 03 April 2006

     The photograph, seen worldwide, is one of the defining images 
from Abu Ghraib: a dog strains at its leash, lunging at a terrified 
prisoner in an orange jumpsuit. One United States military dog 
handler was recently convicted of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib, 
the prison in Iraq, and the court-martial of another is to start in 
May.

     But for Ibrahim Turkmen and Akhil Sachdeva, the image evokes 
something closer to home: the dogs used inside the Passaic County 
Jail in New Jersey. The two men, plaintiffs in a pending class-action 
lawsuit known as Turkmen v. Ashcroft, were among hundreds of 
immigrant detainees held in the Passaic jail for months after 9/11 
before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported on visa 
violations.

     Until now, lawsuits brought by former detainees against top 
American officials have focused attention on the maximum security 
unit of a federal detention center in Brooklyn where the Justice 
Department's inspector general found widespread abuse. But today in 
Toronto, as Mr. Sachdeva, a Canadian citizen born in India, gives his 
first deposition for the class-action lawsuit, the spotlight will 
shift to the New Jersey jail.

     There, about 400 of the 762 mainly Muslim detainees rounded up in 
the United States after 9/11 were held. The lawsuit charges that the 
detainees' confinement was arbitrary, illegally based on their 
religion or national origin, and that guards routinely terrorized 
them with aggressive dogs.

     In November 2004, federal officials who oversee the detention of 
immigrants facing deportation said they would no longer send 
detainees to jails that used dogs to patrol inside. That decision by 
the Department of Homeland Security came a day after National Public 
Radio broadcast an investigative report saying that the dogs had been 
used over a three-year period to intimidate, attack and, in at least 
two cases, bite immigrant detainees in the Passaic County Jail.

     "To hear about the use of dogs in this way within the United 
States is truly shocking," said Jonathan Turley, a professor of 
national security and constitutional law at George Washington 
University, who is not involved in the case. "But Abu Ghraib didn't 
spring from the head of Zeus."

     Mr. Turley, an expert in prison law, said in an interview on 
Friday that the use of the dogs to frighten detainees in the New 
Jersey jail underscored "the trickle-down effect" of the disregard 
for immigrants' civil rights that top government officials showed 
after 9/11. "It trickled down through military intelligence, through 
low-level personnel and to sheriffs," he said. "Suddenly people who 
were predisposed to the use of such harsh measures thought they had 
license to use them, and 9/11 gave them a great appetite."

     While dozens of jails and prisons that house federal immigrant 
detainees use dogs, largely to search for drugs, only seven used them 
to control prisoners. Jail officials defended the dog patrols, which 
were used before 9/11 and continue for control of other inmates. Bill 
Maer, a spokesman for the Passaic County sheriff, Jerry Speziale, 
denied that the post-9/11 detainees had been mistreated and said that 
the dog teams are used "strictly for security and contraband 
detection purposes" and "act in a professional manner when 
interacting with inmates."

     But the dogs were described as part of a nightmarish form of 
psychological torture by the two plaintiffs, who spoke in separate 
telephone interviews last week - Mr. Turkmen from Konia, Turkey, and 
Mr. Sachdeva from Toronto.

     Two or three times a week, they said, often around 3 a.m. when 
the detainees were fast asleep in dormitory cells housing about 50 
men, the electronic doors would open and 10 to 20 officers would rush 
in with four to six unmuzzled, barking dogs on leashes. The dogs, 
mostly German shepherds, would strain to within inches of the 
detainees' faces, they said.

     "The guards would barely be able to hold the dogs back," said Mr. 
Turkmen, who could not come for his scheduled deposition because he 
was denied a visa by the Canadian government, without explanation. 
"The day of judgment would begin for me - that's what it would feel 
like."

     Mr. Sachdeva said that he found himself trembling uncontrollably, 
and that some detainees started to cry. "The guards who were holding 
the dogs used to always laugh," he recalled. "There were like four or 
five dogs, barking, terrorizing, and the officers shouting: 'Get up! 
Raise your hands! Against the wall!' One time the dog was so close 
his tongue touched me."

     It was worst, they said, for detainees who, like Mr. Turkmen, 
lacked English to understand the officers. Once, Mr. Sachdeva said, a 
Pakistani man of 51 who did not speak a word of English was beaten 
bloody by guards because he had stayed on his bed after twice being 
ordered off.

     Government officials will not discuss the lawsuit, brought in 
2002 by the Center for Constitutional Rights. But when the Justice 
Department's inspector general criticized the post-9/11 detentions of 
immigrants in a scathing 2003 report, John Ashcroft, then the 
attorney general, said he had "no apologies" for measures taken to 
protect the public.

     Nevertheless, after the inspector general's report, "there were 
changes made and new detention standards issued nationwide," said 
Dean Boyd, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part 
of Homeland Security.

     The report found conditions at Passaic considerably less harsh 
than those at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where 
solitary confinement was the norm and beatings of shackled detainees 
were caught on videotape. But it criticized Passaic for mingling 
immigrant detainees with felons, and it said that immigration 
officials had failed to properly monitor the jail and to investigate 
complaints of abuse.

     It told of a detainee with a black eye and a limp who told 
investigators that he had been assaulted by guards and put in an 
isolation cell, where guards brought a dog. He said the guards told 
him "that if he did not get out of bed by the next day, they were 
going to 'let the dog loose.' "

     The report criticized the way federal authorities swept up 
immigrants after 9/11 as "indiscriminate and haphazard."

     Mr. Turkmen, who has four daughters, now 7 to 19, had overstayed 
a tourist visa to work at a gas station in West Babylon, N.Y., when 
federal agents came to his apartment. Though an immigration judge 
agreed to let him leave voluntarily, a standard option in minor 
immigration violations, he was held for four months more.

     Two years after his return to Turkey, he said, he saw a news 
report about Abu Ghraib and the dogs. "I told my children that this 
exact form of torture is what I experienced," he said through a 
translator. "All my children were completely shocked."

     Mr. Sachdeva, who is Hindu, had returned to the United States to 
complete his divorce from an American woman who owned a gas station 
in Port Washington, N.Y., when F.B.I agents came there looking for 
someone else.

     "At this point I have no faith in the system," said Mr. Sachdeva, 
34, who said he was now self-employed as a metals trader because his 
arrest and deportation made it impossible to get a job. "I'm glad at 
least I can speak what really happened."


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