The outrages by BushCo and the penal system's administrators and guards with respect to suspected "terrorists" continues to make a mockery of the American criminal justice system. From The Smirking Chimp website I found this article, Robyn E. Blumner: 'For some defendants, an American gulag'. The report concerns Dr. Sami Al-Arian who is being held at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Sumter County, FL.
The conditions that are described by the reporter are shocking but in line with other reports about the abuse and mistreatment of citizens (and alien residents) of Middle Eastern origin by various governmental organs like INS. The reporter, Robyn E. Blumner, makes a telling analogy with Bernard Malamud's The Fixer, which is about the old Soviet gulag organ.
"Al-Arian shares a 7-by-13-foot cell with co-defendant Sameeh Hammoudeh. The amount of room they have for both of them violates the American Correctional Association guidelines for a single prisoner. Here, they are warehoused for 23 hours a day, let out only for an hour of recreation five times a week. But even then they are denied daylight. Their recreation cell is a cage adjacent to the cellblock which is surrounded by a high wall and an opaque weather covering.
All done for their own safety, says the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
In a display of petty cruelty, whenever Al-Arian has a meeting with his lawyers, the guards refuse to carry his legal documents. He is forced to walk bent over, with his hands shackled behind him, balancing the paperwork on his back. "Like an animal," says Linda Moreno, one of his lawyers. After the meeting he is strip searched - sometimes with other prisoners and guards watching.
But this is actually a step up. He used to be strip searched after every non-contact visit from family, too. Finally, a federal magistrate put a stop to it."
This is what passes as "fair" treatment of the accused under the Bush administration.
"There is bias operating here. This is the same sort of mistreatment faced by hundreds of immigrants swept up into detention facilities after 9/11. The Bush administration has determined that a different set of rules should apply to anyone suspected of aiding terrorism." writes Robyn E. Blumner.
While Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been charged with 50 count indictment, including heading the American operation of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, this is not the way of showing the fairness and impartiality of the U.S. justice system. However, it does show the world how a radical in power will do everything to subvert the standards of treatment for the accused under the rubic that "9/11- Has changed everything".
The conditions that are described by the reporter are shocking but in line with other reports about the abuse and mistreatment of citizens (and alien residents) of Middle Eastern origin by various governmental organs like INS. The reporter, Robyn E. Blumner, makes a telling analogy with Bernard Malamud's The Fixer, which is about the old Soviet gulag organ.
"Al-Arian shares a 7-by-13-foot cell with co-defendant Sameeh Hammoudeh. The amount of room they have for both of them violates the American Correctional Association guidelines for a single prisoner. Here, they are warehoused for 23 hours a day, let out only for an hour of recreation five times a week. But even then they are denied daylight. Their recreation cell is a cage adjacent to the cellblock which is surrounded by a high wall and an opaque weather covering.
All done for their own safety, says the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
In a display of petty cruelty, whenever Al-Arian has a meeting with his lawyers, the guards refuse to carry his legal documents. He is forced to walk bent over, with his hands shackled behind him, balancing the paperwork on his back. "Like an animal," says Linda Moreno, one of his lawyers. After the meeting he is strip searched - sometimes with other prisoners and guards watching.
But this is actually a step up. He used to be strip searched after every non-contact visit from family, too. Finally, a federal magistrate put a stop to it."
This is what passes as "fair" treatment of the accused under the Bush administration.
"There is bias operating here. This is the same sort of mistreatment faced by hundreds of immigrants swept up into detention facilities after 9/11. The Bush administration has determined that a different set of rules should apply to anyone suspected of aiding terrorism." writes Robyn E. Blumner.
While Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been charged with 50 count indictment, including heading the American operation of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, this is not the way of showing the fairness and impartiality of the U.S. justice system. However, it does show the world how a radical in power will do everything to subvert the standards of treatment for the accused under the rubic that "9/11- Has changed everything".
posted by Ken at 4:55 PM
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