tagged w/ Solitary Confinement
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An Iranian man has had his death sentence for operating a pornography website quashed, reports say.
Saeed Malekpour had been living in Canada and was in the process of applying for citizenship when he returned to his native Iran in 2008 to visit his ill father. When he arrived, he was placed under arrest for designing and moderating adult websites, which is illegal in Iran. He was also charged with taking action against national security, agitating against the regime, contact with foreign entities and insulting the sanctity of Islam.
Malekpour has been a Canadian resident since 2004. Both Malekpour's lawyers and supporters say that he is innocent of all charges, and that the porn site used the upload code for a photo site he had written without his knowledge. After his arrest, Malekpour was kept in solitary confinement for almost a year without access to legal representation. Malekpour's lawyers also say that he was brutally tortured to extract a videotaped confession, which officials then broadcast on state television. Malekpour wrote a letter to his supporters about the confession which was published on the website they maintain for his cause. From the Guardian Online:
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/08/iran-quashes-death-sentence-for-canadian-residentAn Iranian man has had his death sentence for operating a pornography website quashed,... more
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Elmer 'Geronimo' Pratt, a former Black Panther leader, dies in Tanzania
June 2, 2011 | 7:36 pm
Elmer G. "Geronimo" Pratt, a former Los Angeles Black Panther Party leader who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit and whose case became a symbol of racial injustice during the turbulent 1960s, has died. He was 63.
Pratt died at his home in a small village in Tanzania, where he had been living with his wife and child, according to Stuart Hanlon, a San Francisco attorney who helped overturn Pratt's murder conviction. Hanlon said he was informed of the death by Pratt's sister.
Pratt's case became a cause celebre for elected officials, Amnesty International, clergy and celebrities who believed he was framed by the government because he was African American and a member of the Black Panthers.
"Geronimo was a powerful leader," Hanlon told The Times. "For that reason he was targeted."
Pratt was convicted in 1972 and sentenced to life in prison for the 1968 fatal shooting of Caroline Olsen and the serious wounding of her husband, Kenneth, in a robbery that netted $18. The case was overturned in 1997 by an Orange County Superior Court judge who ruled that prosecutors at Pratt's murder trial had concealed evidence that could have led to his acquittal.
Pratt maintained that the FBI knew he was innocent because the agency had him under surveillance in Oakland when the murder was committed in Santa Monica.
Photo: Elmer G. Pratt (left)
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Elmer 'Geronimo' Pratt, a former Black Panther leader, dies in Tanzania... more
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"Free Bradley Manning" Rally, Quantico, Virginia. A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Veterans for Peace, Code Pink and others protest outside of the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Film by Rupert Chappelle."Free Bradley Manning" Rally, Quantico, Virginia. A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition,... more
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The Pentagon pushed back Friday against news reports that accuse the US military of mistreating the soldier charged with stealing sensitive and classified documents and giving them to the WikiLeaks website, calling the allegations “blatantly false.”
The renewed scrutiny into the treatment of Private First Class Bradley Manning, including whether he is being held in solitary confinement, comes on the heels of recent reports like one that ran Wednesday in Salon.com, charging that “Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhuman, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation.”
Even as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released from jail Thursday to an estate outside of London to await an extradition hearing, critics argue that Manning’s confinement has been largely ignored
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2010/1217/Bradley-Manning-in-isolation-US-defends-treatment-of-WikiLeaks-suspectThe Pentagon pushed back Friday against news reports that accuse the US military of... more
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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is asking the USDA to approve a pilot program that would prevent his city’s residents from buying sugar-sweetened soda with food stamps. Some have called the proposal paternalistic. However, at In These Times, Terry J. Allen argues that Bloomberg’s proposal makes sense.
Allen notes that New Yorkers may spend up to $135 million in food stamp benefits on sodas. Nationwide, the food stamp program funnels about $4 billion into the pockets of soda manufacturers. Sugary carbonated drinks are artificially profitable for Big Pop because they are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, a heavily subsidized by-product of our broken agricultural system.
There are already restrictions on what you can buy with food stamps. Nobody thinks it’s patronizing that alcohol is off-limits, even though alcoholic beverage are a potential source of calories. A little discussed benefit of ending the soda subsidy within the food stamp program would be the incentive it gives to small storekeepers in poor neighborhoods to devote less floor and refrigerator space to carbonated drinks and more room to real food. Many low income New Yorkers struggle to buy healthy food in their neighborhoods. Soda subsidies only make the “food desert” problem worse.
Impatient to die
Prisoners on Death Row in Texas spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. The death house in Texas is one of the most restrictive in the nation. Conditions are so bad that many inmates are actively looking forward to their execution day to put an end to the crushing isolation, Dave Mann reports in the Texas Observer. There is a growing consensus among psychiatrists that solitary confinement is a form of torture. Some experts, and many inmates, believe that solitary confinement is literally driving Texas death row inmates insane.
Daniel Lopez is in a hurry to die: “I don’t see no point in waiting 20 years for them to finally decide to execute me.” That’s the first thing he tells me when I sit down to interview him. We are seated in the Polunsky Unit’s visiting room. Lopez is encased in a small booth. We are separated by thick, soundproof glass and talk through phones. [...] [Lopez] says he has no desire to remain on death row. He says he’s looking forward to execution day. He doesn’t want to live much longer in his small cell. “I don’t think that’s a life for somebody,” he says.
Health reform and the courts
Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones takes a closer look a the legal challenges to health care reform. Republicans in Virginia have been given the green light to challenge the constitutionality of the individual mandate in court. In October, a U.S. District judge in Detroit refused to issue a preliminary injunction to stop the implementation of health care reform in Michigan. On Monday, a U.S. District judge in Lynchburg, VA, dismissed Liberty University’s anti-health reform lawsuit. Another Virginia judge says he will rule on a similar suit by the State Attorney General by the end of the year.
The current crop of politically motivated lawsuits challenging the individual mandate are legally tenuous at best. Aziz Huq wrote in The Nation: “Among constitutional scholars, the puzzle is not how the federal government can defend the new law, but why anyone thinks a constitutional challenge is even worth making.”
As Columbia law professor Gillian Metzger explained to Chris Hayes of The Nation earlier this year, the constitutionality of the individual mandate is basically a “no-brainer.” The way the Affordable Care Act is written, everyone who doesn’t have health insurance from some provider has two options: Buy subsidized health insurance or pay a tax. The federal government obviously has the right to collect taxes. The case is expected to go all the way to the Supreme Court, but it seems unlikely to prevail. The real fear is that a lower court will paralyze the implementation of health care reform while the decision is pending.
Crisis pregnancy center bill
Shakthi Jothianandan of Ms. Magazine has the latest on proposed legislation that would force so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in New York City to disclose that they are not real reproductive health clinics. The New York City Council held a hearing on the proposed legislation in mid-November, which brought together officials from the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene, Planned Parenthood, Concerned Clergy for Choice and staff from CPCs around the city. The representatives for the CPCs claimed that the bill violates their free speech rights, but the head of the New York Civil Liberties Union testified that requiring organizations to disclose that they are not real health care facilities and don’t provide a full range of services does not infringe on any First Amendment right.
CeCe Heil, senior counsel with the Christian anti-abortion group American Center for Law and Justice, claimed the legislation was unnecessary because women are already smart enough to know that “abortion alternatives” means “alternatives to abortion.” Many of the CPCs have “life” in their name, which should signal to potential clients that they do not provide abortion or abortion referrals. But if it’s really so obvious that CPCs are just anti-choice ministries posing as reproductive health clinics, why oppose a law that simply requires all facilities to disclose the obvious?
Boehner meets with anti-choice extremist
Future Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) met with anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry, as Miriam Perez of Feministing reports. Terry is the founder of the radical anti-choice group Operation Rescue, which has a long record of advocating violence against abortion providers. After Dr. George Tiller, one of the country’s last high-profile late-term abortion providers, was assassinated, Terry called Tiller a “mass murderer” who “horrifically, reaped what he sowed.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
New York City Mayor Michael... more
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"New figures meanwhile show the US prison population has reached an all-time high. According to the Justice Department, 2.3 million people were behind bars last year. The prison population continues to grow at less than one percent, down from an annual six percent growth during the previous decade."
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/10/headlines
(image taken from the Callifornia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation websites "Prison Overcrowding Photos")"New figures meanwhile show the US prison population has reached an all-time... more
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"In New York, the trial of a young US citizen who has been held in twenty-three-hour solitary confinement for nearly three years has been delayed until next month. Syed Fahad Hashmi is charged with providing material support to al-Qaeda in a case that rests on the testimony and actions of an old acquaintance who turned government informant after his own arrest. Hashmi is being prosecuted for a two-week period when the informant stayed at his home carrying rain gear that was allegedly later delivered to al-Qaeda members in Pakistan. Hashmi’s period in solitary confinement is believed to be one of the longest ever for a prisoner before trial. Hashmi’s family and supporters continue to hold weekly rallies outside the Manhattan federal prison where he’s jailed."
Faisal Hashmi: “And from the court interactions where we see him in court, he looks like a shell of the person that he was before. He looks frail, and he looks jittery. As you can imagine, people cannot stand solitary confinement for a day or two days or three days. He’s been in solitary, straight solitary confinement, ahead of his trial for two-and-a-half years without having a conviction, because the government said so.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/8/headlines
"Of more than 200,000 federal inmates, 42 are held under special administrative measures (SAMs) and of those, 28 are imprisoned on terrorism-related convictions, the Justice Department said."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5B851920091209"In New York, the trial of a young US citizen who has been held in... more
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Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan.
Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda.
Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information.
“I don’t believe that they just found Aafia,” she said. “I believe that she was there all along.”
The fate of her three young, American-born children is still unknown.
Before her disappearance, Mrs Siddiqui lived in a Boston suburb of Roxbury and studied at Brandeis University as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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More at link.
To learn more about who Aafia Siddiqui really is, click here: http://soj.weblog.ro/2004-05-29/10410/The-mysterious-case-of-Aafia-Saddiqui.html
In a 2006 report, Amnesty International listed Mrs Siddiqui as among a number of “disappeared” suspects in the war on terrorism. On July 6, 2007, AI listed Mrs Siddiqui as a possible CIA “secret detainee”, although she was still on the FBI’s Seeking Information - Terrorism list. Late last week, Mrs Siddiqui’s photo still appeared on the FBI’s list of people wanted for questioning.
Since no charges were ever filed against her, human rights groups treated her case as that of “extrajudicial detention”, although no government ever claimed detaining her.
Even the FBI does not mention any charges in the notice seeking information about her. “Although the FBI has no information indicating this individual is connected to specific terrorist activities, the FBI would like to locate and question this individual,” says the notice.
The “gray lady of Bagram”: On July 7, a British journalist Yvonne Ridley told a news conference in Islamabad that a Pakistani woman had been held in solitary confinement for years at the Bagram US base near Kabul. The identity of this prisoner remains unconfirmed. She has been nicknamed the “gray lady of Bagram”. Ms Ridley, however, speculated that she was Aafia Siddiqui.
Moazzam Begg and several other former captives also have reported that a female prisoner, prisoner 650, was held in Bagram. The former captives claim that she has lost her sanity and cries all the time.
Although it is still not clear if the “gray lady of Bagram” is Aafia Siddiqui, her family’s attorney told reporters on Friday that the FBI had finally conceded that Mrs Siddiqui is in US custody.
“It has been confirmed by the FBI that Aafia Siddiqui is alive,” said Ms Sharp, who said she spoke to an FBI official on Thursday.
“She is injured but alive, and she is in Afghanistan.”
For five years, US and Pakistani authorities denied knowing her whereabouts. But human rights groups and Mrs Siddiqui’s relatives had long suspected that she had been captured in Karachi and secretly taken into custody.
On Thursday, an FBI official visited Mrs Siddiqui’s brother in Houston to deliver the news that she was alive and in custody, Ms Sharp said.
FBI officials, however, would not say who was holding her or reveal the fate of her children.
“If she’s in US custody, they want to know where she is,” Ms Sharp said. “Who has got her? And does she need medical care?”
The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment.
Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded... more
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