Confirmed: CIA secret prison in Poland

Πηγή: RT
April 1 2012

Another CIA-run interrogation 'black site' has been exposed after the confessions of top-ranking Polish officials blew the lid on the dirtiest secret in Eastern Europe.

The former head of Poland’s intelligence service secret Zbigniew Siemiatkowski has been charged with taking part in establishing a secret prison for the CIA in a remote part of the country. Allegedly, foreign prisoners in the detention center were tortured in connection with America's global war on terror.

Siemiatkowski refused to comment on the matter, citing the country's secrecy laws. However, he did not deny the report.

Rumors about Poland hosting a CIA-run prison had circulated for years, though the country's authorities dismissed them as absurd. However, the UN and the Council of Europe had long claimed they had evidence of the site’s existence.

Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former Prime Minister Leszek Miller both repeatedly denied the knowledge of the prison.

The official investigation into a CIA-run prison in Poland started in 2008, a year after Donald Tusk took office. It took three years for evidence of the site to come to light.

Allegedly, a secret interrogation facility for terror suspects was operating in Stare Kiejkuty, a small village in remote Poland, from December 2002 to the fall of 2003, “depriving prisoners of war of their freedom” and “allowing corporal punishment.”

Earlier, two prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, claimed they were prisoners at this ‘black site.’ Polish prosecutors have already given the two “victim status”.

Among other possible detainees are self-proclaimed 9/11 terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, perpetrator of the 2000 USS Cole bombing Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Palestinian terror suspect Abu Zubaydah.

According to the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, up to eight prisoners underwent “extraordinary rendition” to be tortured in Poland.

The harsh interrogation techniques used by the American spooks included waterboarding, starvation, cooling of the body, visual and acoustic deprivation for extended periods of time, slamming prisoners against walls, and mock execution, among many other methods.

Naturally, torture is not allowed in any European country, Poland included. If it is proven that Poland did in fact allow torture to take place at a CIA facility in their country, the matter could be taken before the European Court of Human Rights. The prosecution of Polish and American agents would also remain a distinct possibility.

“We can think about Polish intelligence officers who most probably somehow collaborated with the CIA in establishing this site. We can think about the CIA officers, because if they made it [tortures] in the territory of Poland – it is a crime,” human rights lawyer and head of the legal division at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights Dr Adam Bodnar told RT.

“But as you most probably know, the US authorities would not give any data regarding them and would not allow them to be extradited,” he concluded.

Never ever again in Poland?

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk fully supports the high-profile case against the former senior official.

Tusk charged that Poland has become a “political victim” of US officials.

“This may be painful, but concrete evidence that Poland is no longer a country where politicians can fix something under the table and expect it not to [eventually] come out — even if they do so with the world’s greatest superpower,"Tusk stated.

In fact, the Polish PM was left no other choice but to recognize the existence of the CIA prison in his country. Tusk charged that Poland has become the “political victim” of US officials leaking some aspects of their bilateral relations.

“Poland is a democracy where national and international law must be observed,” Poland’s PM stated, demanding an investigation into the matter. “Let there be no doubt about it either in Poland or on the other side of the ocean,” he said harshly.

“Poland will no longer be a country where politicians, even if they are working arm-in-arm with the world's greatest superpower, could make some deal somewhere under the table and then it would never see daylight,” he said in reference to the ongoing investigation which is meant to ensure that nothing like this will happen in Poland again.

The US never disclosed the whereabouts of the so-called “black sites,” but human rights groups named Afghanistan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Thailand as the most likely hosts.

Lithuania was the first country in Europe to admit it had allowed the CIA to establish two secret detention facilities in 2002-2006.

In November 2011, Lithuania faced a lawsuit for hosting a secret CIA prison on its soil when Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, claimed he was detained and tortured there.

Texas Prison System Goes To Two Meals A Day On Weekends To Cut Costs

Πηγή: Huffington Post
Oct 22 2011

As the weak economy continues to hit cash-strapped city and state governments, some are passing the costs on to prisoners.

More than 20,000 Texas prisoners have been eating two meals a day on weekends since April, in a bid by the prison system to cut food-service costs, The New York Times reports.

The two-a-day weekend meal plan is part of an effort to cut the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's budget by $2.8 million; other cost-cutting measures include giving prisoners sliced bread instead of hamburger or hot dog buns and offering powdered milk instead of carton milk, according to The NYT.

The Department of Criminal Justice cuts are part of an overall plan to slash spending in Texas. Legislators passed a budget that reduced state spending by more than $15 billion and cut 5,700 jobs in the state, the Star-Telegram reported.

Texas isn't the only state taking measures to cut the costs of housing prisoners. Florida lawmakers passed two bills earlier this week that would expand the state's prison rehabilitation program and reduce jail time for non-violent criminals in a bid to make some headway in the state's $2.3 billion budget deficit, according to Bloomberg.

Washington state's Department of Corrections is looking to stave off cuts as the state government encourages agencies to help it find ways to cut $2 billion from its budget, The Seattle Times reports. Under one reduction proposal, more than 10,000 currently supervised former prisoners participating in the state's version of parole would become unsupervised. Other proposals include increasing prisoners' health care co-pays from $3 to $4, The Seattle Times reports.

California started a large-scale prison "realignment" program last month that transferred responsibility for the state’s lower-level offenders to county prisons in an effort to cut costs.

Prison system cuts aren't the only indication of suffering state and local economies. One county in Georgia is considering employing inmates as firefighters in an effort to ease budget woes. Other areas around the country are seeing extreme effects from the crisis;Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was the sixth city to file for bankruptcy protection in 2011, according to NPR.

Poet jailed in protests claims she was beaten by Bahraini royal

MAZEN MAHDI/EPA

Πηγή: The Independent

Monday, 18 July 2011

Ayat al-Gormezi says she was tortured while in jail for reciting a poem at a pro-democracy protest. Patrick Cockburn reports

Ayat al-Gormezi arriving at her home last week after her sudden release from prison. She was sentenced to a year in prison last month by a military court after reciting a poem critical of Bahrain's rulers.

A female member of the al-Khalifa royal family in Bahrain has been accused of repeatedly beating the 20-year-old student poet Ayat al-Gormezi when she was in prison accused of reciting a poem at a pro-democracy protest rally criticising the monarchy.

In an interview with The Independent, Ms Gormezi, who became a symbol of resistance to oppression in Bahrain, said that although her interrogators had tried to blindfold her, "I was able to see a woman of about 40 in civilian clothes who was beating me on the head with a baton". Ms Gormezi later described her interrogator to prison guards, who, she said, promptly named the woman as being one of the al-Khalifas with a senior position in the Bahraini security service.

"I was taken many times to her office for fresh beatings," Ms Gormezi said. "She would say, 'You should be proud of the al-Khalifas. They are not going to leave this country. It is their country.' "

The guards explained that it wasnot her regular job, but she had volunteered to take part in questioning political detainees.

Ms Gormezi was detained on 30 March at her parents' house after spending two weeks in hiding when the government, backed by a Saudi-led force, started a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in mid-March. She had been targeted by the authorities after she read out a poem at a rally in February which contained the lines: "We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery. We are the people who will destroy injustice."

Addressing King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa directly, she said of the Bahraini people: "Don't you hear their cries? Don't you hear their screams?" As she finished speaking the crowd roared: "Down with Hamad!"

Subjected to nine days of torture after her detention, Ms Gormezi described how she was beaten across the face with electric cables, kept in a tiny, freezing cell and forced to clean lavatories with her bare hands. All the while, she was beaten on the head and the body until she lost consciousness. "Many of the guards were Yemenis and Jordanians," she said. The recruitment of members of the Bahraini security forces from foreign Sunni states is one of the grievances of Bahrain's Shia majority, which says it is excluded from such jobs.

In a phone interview after her release, Ms Gormezi said she does not regret reading her poem in Pearl Square, the centre of Bahrain's democratic protests in February and March. "What I said was not a personal attack on the King or the Prime Minister but I was just expressing what the people want. I have written poetry since I was a child, but not about politics. I did not think it was dangerous at the time. I was just expressing my opinion."

After the crackdown on protesters in Bahrain started in mid-March, the tall monument in Pearl Square was demolished and even the Bahraini coin showing it was withdrawn. Anybody supporting the protests was in danger of detention and torture. Ms Gormezi's family sent her to stay with relatives, which she "did not want to do. But after two weeks the security forces threatened my family and I had to give myself up. As I was taken away in a car, my family were told to pick me up at a police station the following day, so they thought it was not serious".

Her mistreatment started immediately. She said: "There were four men and one woman in the car, all wearing balaclavas. They beat me and shouted 'you are going to be sexually assaulted! This is the last day of your life!'" They also made anti-Shia remarks. "I was terrified of being sexually assaulted or raped, but not of being beaten."

The vehicle she was in, escorted by the army and police, did not immediately go to the interrogation centre but drove around Bahrain. Another woman, whom Ms Gormezi said was a member of the teachers' organisation, was arrested and put in the boot of the car. Eventually, it reached the interrogation centre, which evidently doubled as a prison. Ms Gormezi said the beatings never stopped: "Once they told me to open my mouth and spat in it." The first night she was put in a tiny cell. "It smelled awful and I could not sleep because of the screams of a man being tortured in the next cell."

The second night she was placed in another cell with the two vents for air conditioning producing freezing air. She was taken out for regular beatings. "I was very frightened," she said. "But I did not think they would kill me because every time I lost consciousness from the beatings, they called a doctor."

Surprisingly, for the first four or five days, the interrogators did not ask Ms Gormezi about reading out her poem in Pearl Square. They abused the Shia in general, saying they were "bastards" and not properly married (the accusation stems from the Shia institution of temporary marriage and is often used as an insult by Sunnis).

"When they did ask me about the poem, they kept saying: 'Who asked you to write it? Who paid you to write it?'" Ms Gormezi said. They insisted she must have been ordered to do so by Shia leaders in Bahrain or was a member of a political group, which she denies.

The interrogators also kept saying she must owe allegiance to Iran. An obsessive belief that Shia demands for equal rights in Bahrain must be orchestrated by Tehran has long been a central feature of Sunni conspiracy theorists. "They kept asking me: 'Why are you loyal to Iran? Why are you not loyal to your own country?'" Ms Gormezi said. "I said it was nothing to do with Iran. I am a Bahraini and I was only trying to express what the people want."

After nine days in the interrogation centre, Ms Gormezi was taken to a second prison in Isa town in Bahrain. For a week she was in solitary confinement and was given medication so the signs of her beatings were less visible. She was then taken to a more general prison where physical mistreatment stopped and there were four other women. "After 16 days they let me talk to my family," she said. "It was meant to be for three minutes but they let me talk for 10. Once they took me back to the first interrogation centre to record a video apologising to the King."

International protests and ensuing bad publicity for the Bahraini monarchy led to her treatment improving, according to her family. Ms Gormezi was brought before a court on 12 June and sentenced to one year in prison, a shorter sentence than her family had feared. Last week she was called to an office in the prison and told she was to be released on the condition that she should not take part in other protests.

Activist accuses police in protester's death

* A Bahraini rights activist says a woman has died during clashes between riot police and anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom.

Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, said that 47-year-old Zainab Hasan Ahmed al-Jumaa suffocated after inhaling tear gas fired by riot police during a demonstration on Friday near her home in Sitra, the hub of Bahrain's oil industry. Her death brings to 33 the number of those who have died since February when Bahrain's Shia majority started protests for greater freedoms in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.

Bahrain's Interior Ministry denied that Ms Jumaa's death was linked to a police operation and said in a statement posted on the ministry's website late on Friday that the woman died of natural causes. The claims came after tens of thousands of Bahrainis shouting "one man, one vote" attended a rally for political reform held by a leading opposition party, days before the group decides whether to pull out of national reform talks.

Bahrain's Sunni rulers have launched a national dialogue to discuss reforms and heal deep rifts in the kingdom after ending a four-month crackdown on weeks of protests led by the Shia majority early this year. Waving Bahraini flags and raising their hands, the demonstrators gathered to hear a speech by Sheikh Ali Salman, head of the largest Shia opposition group, Wefaq.

"The real victory is reaching a national consensus on serious democratic reforms that meet popular demands for justice and produce security, stability and growth," he said to the cheers of crowds who filled alleyways and rooftops.

The California Prison System. The Pelican Bay Prison Hunger Strikers: We Are Human Beings!

Πηγή: Global Recearch

By Li Onesto, July 12, 2011


"What is of note here and something that should concern all U.S. citizens, is the increasing use of behavioral control, i.e. Torture units and human experimental techniques against prisoners, not only in California but across the nation. Indefinite confinement, sensory deprivation, withholding food, constant illumination and use of unsubstantiated lies from informants are the psychological billy clubs being used in these torture units. The purpose of this ‘treatment’ is to stop prisoners from standing in opposition to inhumane prison conditions and prevent them from exercising their basic human rights.”

Statement of Solidarity with the Pelican Bay Collective Hunger Strike on July 1st and announcement of participation by Corcoran SHU prisoners
(from California Prison Watch, californiaprisonwatch.blogspot.com)

On Friday, July 1, prisoners in California’s infamous Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison began a courageous and determined hunger strike. This then, very quickly, turned into a display of collective outrage and solidarity among prisoners throughout the state and beyond.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) initially tried to say the strike was fewer than two dozen prisoners. But they then had to admit that by their own count, more than 500 inmates refused food at Pelican Bay State Prison and that 6,600 prisoners in 13 different prisons participated in the hunger strike on the weekend of July 2-3.

This is an extremely significant and extraordinary development, something that challenges people on “the outside” to sit up and take notice. Many have been moved to support the prisoners in their just demands.

The Pelican Bay SHU is designed to subject prisoners to solitary confinement, isolation and sensory deprivation—indefinitely. Some prisoners have been kept in these completely inhumane conditions for years and decades. And the prisoners in the SHU write that they are fighting to let the world know the brutal injustices being done to them; and that they are risking their lives to send out a message that they are human beings! That they refuse to be treated like animals.

One of the ways prison officials maintain control is by pitting prisoners against each other by race and ethnicity, and exploiting and promoting other divisions among prisoners. But this hunger strike is crossing barriers that usually divide prisoners—building unity to fight the horrendous conditions they all face. The New York Times reported, “The hunger strike has transcended the gang and geographic affiliations that traditionally divide prisoners, with prisoners of many backgrounds participating.”