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. ()
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] ()
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. ()
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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