The Sörmland County Council in central Sweden ‘accidentally’ hired a convicted criminal who had served a long prison sentence for threatening to blow up oil storage tanks and had to pay 1million kronor in severance pay to get rid of him. … Read More
Bloody confession: Tsarnaev ‘wrote note’ inside boat prior to arrest
The confession specifically named US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq as motives for the attack, and called the Boston Marathon bombing victims ‘collateral damage’ in the same vein that Muslim civilians had been killed in American led wars, CBS news reports.”When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” the note allegedly added. Dzhokhar reportedly declared he did not mourn the death of his older brother Tamerlan – the other suspect in the bombings, who died from injured received during a shootout with police – saying he was already a martyr in paradise. Dzhokhar added that he expected to join his brother in the afterlife. Law enforcement sources told the network the wall the note had been scribbled on was riddled with bullet holes. Police unloaded a volley of shots after Dzhokhar lifted up the tarpaulin, claiming they feared he had another bomb. He had sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was severely bleeding from injuries to his left ear, neck and thigh. Initial reports said his neck wound was possibly from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a botched suicide attempt, though it was later revealed that Dzhokhar was unarmed when captured in Suburban Watertown Massachusetts on April 19. His arrest followed a massive manhunt which brought the greater Boston area to a standstill. Police say the contents of the confession mirror many of the things he communicated to investigators while recovering from his injuries at a hospital several days later. The confession will be admissible in court. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is currently convalescing in a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts and has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in the deadly attack which killed three people and injured 264 near the marathon finish line on April 15.If found guilty, he could face the death penalty. … Read More
Hunger games: Critical health fears as Gitmo strike marks Day 100
Lawyers of the Guantanamo Bay prison detainees have been increasingly worried that the inmates condition, particularly overwhelming weight loss, is life threatening. This concern comes as the longest hunger strike in the prison’s history has long exceeded the point of what experts describe as irreversible health risks – and coincides with reports of prison authorities allegedly hampering the inmates’ communication with their attorneys.Follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike. Three days without food is the time needed for a human body to start consuming fat and muscle protein, losing its mass, according to a study on mass hunger strikes published by the California Correctional Health Care Services.Those not eating for two weeks are often so weak they cannot stand or walk, and their heart rate drops, states the document. After three weeks of hunger the lack of vitamins in one’s body poses a serious risk of cognitive impairment, vision loss and motor skills damage- impairing their mobility and ability to process simple bodily functions.Some Guantanamo prison inmates have been on hunger strike for over 14 weeks.Studies of the 1981 Irish hunger strike showed that most people couldn’t survive after losing more than 40 per cent of their body weight. Attorneys representing the Guantanamo inmates say a large fraction of the current hunger strikers have already lost about a third of their body weight.There has been little official word on the reports of a rapidly deteriorating condition of some of the inmates, other than statements of the military downplaying and directly refuting such reports.“The reports of hunger-strike related to deteriorating health and detainees losing massive amounts of weight are simply untrue,” Guantanamo spokesperson Navy Capt. Robert Durand said in a letter to RT more than a month after the strike is believed to have started.The International Committee of the Red Cross has been visiting Guantanamo and taking notes on “more than 100 contexts” on the conditions of detention and the treatment of detainees, according to a statement on the ICRC website.But the ICRC policy says the organization does not make any public comments, discussing concerns only “directly and confidentially with the authorities in charge.”In fact, the only detailed accounts on what the hunger strikers look like and how they feel after more than three months of refusing food come from the inmates attorneys and the rare statements from prisoners that they quote and deliver.Lawyer and US army captain Jason Wright has described his client, 32-year-old Afghan Obaidullah, as a 115-pound (50-kilogram) “bag of bones” and “extremely distressing.” “I have pain in waist, dizziness. I cannot sleep well. I fell [sic] hopeless. I cannot exercise. My muscle become weaker in the last 50 days. I have thrown up five times,” Obaidullah himself wrote as quoted by the Independent.The defense lawyers have repeatedly tried to “engage in constructive dialogue” concerning the detainees’ condition and release, but all such attempts “have been met with resistance and silence,” Wright told the media. His client Obaidullah, like many Gitmo detainees, has never been charged despite 11 years of imprisonment.Long-time Guantanamo detainee and veteran hunger striker Shaker Aamer joined the current hunger strike on February 15. Aamer’s lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, has voiced fears that his client may be seriously ill, having long passed beyond the point of “irreversible cognitive impairment” risk.Stafford Smith, who said he was unable to contact his client since the end of April, has recently reported that the detainees are being threatened with humiliating body searches if they seek to contact legal counsel, in a letter sent to UK Foreign Secretary William Hague.A legal British resident and citizen of Saudi Arabia, Aamer has been held without charges for more than 11 years, despite having been cleared for release in 2007 along with the 86 other detainees.Some 10 years ago, Aamer listed arthritis, kidney problems, hearing problems, deteriorating eyesight, hair loss and “aching heart” among the things troubling him. In 2012 he pleaded, “torture me in the old way,” saying here in Guantanamo they “destroy people mentally and physically without leaving marks,” but not letting them “die in peace.”The US Department of Defense has said the military will not let Guantanamo prisoners “commit suicide by starving themselves to death,” and those showing signs of life-threatening conditions have been forcibly fed by means of enteral tubes, including Aamer.But apart from the pain and discomfort the detainees have described in detail, the enteral feeding has another side-effect – the return of the persistent feeling of hunger, which disappears after the first days of fasting.Now the hunger striker Aamer says he “barely notice[s]” his medical ailments, with all the beating and asthma effects fading in the face of “24/7 ache of hunger.” “Really, now it is just pain everywhere. I don’t want to die in Guantanamo,” another defendant of Stafford Smith, Younus Chekkouri, told the attorney over the phone. As of April, the Moroccan national had reportedly lost around 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) of body weight and was surviving on Metamucil.Depression and suicidal thoughts are some of the other problems his clients experience, according to the lawyer. But the mental trauma has remained even with those who have been released.A 43-year-old British resident Omar Deghayes, who was released from Guantanamo without charge in 2007, still recalls the effect of two shorter hunger strikes he has been through.“You start to hallucinate. When people talk to you, you can’t understand them. I started to hear voices. Then I started to vomit blood and puss. Your stomach contracts and when they force-feed large quantities, you can’t control anything, you get diarrhea in your trousers. They take you into the yard and hose you down,” Deghayes told the Independent.A recent report revealed that the assessment of hunger strikers condition and the final decision of who will undergo the painful procedure of force-feeding, have been dependent on the approval of the commander of Guantanamo rather than the opinion of view of prison medics.While international rights groups have long been calling to stop this extremely invasive and highly controversial practice, with the UN condemning it as “torture,” the US responded to the current hunger strike by sending 40 nurses to assist with force-feeding.“I can’t imagine they understood what they are being asked to do for their country. I don’t think they knew how horrific it would be. I hope some of them have the courage to say no,” attorney Wright, who traveled on the same plane as the nurses, has said.Meanwhile, many of the detainees have been ready to die for their dignity, as they have no hope for release, Wright told RT.“I scare myself when I look in the mirror. Let them kill us as we have nothing to lose. We died when Obama indefinitely detained us. Respect us or kill us. It is your choice. The US must take off its mask and kill us,” a desperate statement by Wright’s Kuwaiti client Faiz al-Kandari said as quoted by the lawyer.“The only way this changes is if the world pressures the United States, internally as well. We need the citizens of the United States to stand up and demand that President Obama follow through with his promise… to close the Guantanamo,” Wright urged. … Read More
Colorado auditing prison files over hundreds of misapplied sentences
Though only a fraction of the audit has been completed, the examination has already found “serious questions” in the sentences of some 349 convicts, according to the Denver Post. Judges have amended 56 of those errors and are in the process of clearing the rest. Some of the sentences are erroneous because a judicial clerk gave an incorrect statement to the corrections department, while in other instances prison officials misread the documents. State officials will try to correct their mistakes by returning the wrongfully released to prison and springing others immediately. The audit is not expected to be complete until July, although state officials have identified 8,415 prisoners whose sentences need to be examined. Of that total, 2,500 are expected to warrant a close inspection. If the current rate continues, more than 1,000 individuals will be victims of “serious” sentencing errors. “I think it would be logical to be concerned,” Roger Werholtz, the interim executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, told the Post. “Here’s the reality: Sentencing laws are so complex, it is not unusual to find errors in how sentences are communicated from courts to the state.” Werhotlz is currently serving as interim executive director because his predecessor Tom Clements was murdered at his own front door. Evan Ebel, the man suspected of the crime, was an alleged white supremacist who was killed in a shootout with Texas police. He was known to have assaulted a prison guard in 2006. Ebel did not serve any time for the assault because a clerical error changed the time served order from “consecutive” to “concurrent.” He was released from Fremont Correctional facility four years earlier than his actual intended release date. Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, who was coincidentally friends with Ebel’s father, ordered the audit in response to Clements’ murder. … Read More
Guantanamo denying detainees lawyer contact without invasive body search
See our timeline of the Guantanamo Bay hunger strike.Clive Stafford Smith, who currently represents several inmates at the US prison camp through the legal charity Reprieve, claims that guards at the facility are requiring invasive searches before detainees can conduct in-person interviews or even phone calls to lawyers.A copy of the letter was obtained by The Guardian, and states that as a direct result of the new policy two of Smith’s clients were recently barred from speaking with their legal representatives after refusing the searches.”The US military has started directly abusing prisoners who want to contact their lawyers to tell them what is happening. So anyone who wants to see a lawyer, or have a legal phone call, must have his fingers put up his anus and his genitals touched,” Smith writes.There are currently 100 inmates confirmed by US authorities as participating in the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay since it began in earnest back in February, 29 of whom are being force-fed via tubes.Five of those prisoners are being observed in the detainee hospital, according to a statement by US Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Samuel House on Monday. The official numbers differ from those of human rights activists, who have put the number of strikers at up to 130.The claims by Smith coincide with failure by one of his clients, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, to speak with him via telephone last Friday, allegedly due to the new policy. Moqbel, who is participating in the hunger strike, was the recent author of a New York Times op-ed which detailed the pain and emotional impact of being force-fed by nasal tubes. Agence France-Presse (AFP) has independently reported that another lawyer, David Remes, had two detainees he currently represents decline calls due to the new search procedures.”Under the new search policy, a detainee who leaves his camp is subject to a search including his private parts and holding his private parts,” Remes said.He added that the “shocking” searches were “designed to deter many detainees from meeting with their [lawyers] … to make their life more miserable and put the detainees in front of an impossible choice.”In response to the allegations, Lt. Col. Samuel House has told The Guardian that the new search procedures do not represent anything beyond a pat down:”Full frisk searches are conducted in a professional manner to quickly locate and identify contraband hidden on the body. The searches are conducted with clothes on, similar to a pat-down search conducted by an airport security screener,” says House.According to House, the new procedures were enacted “in light of contraband discovered during recent cell searches.”For his part, Smith believes the allegedly invasive searches cannot be justified.”Any pretext given for these new rules is just that: a pretext. The prisoners do not need to be sexually assaulted in order to be taken to a telephone to talk to their lawyer,” he said. … Read More
The Alex Jones Show 2013-05-13 Monday – Richard Belzer – Katherine Albrecht – Paul Watson
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Alex Jones Show – Commercial Free Podcast: Monday (5-13-13) Richard Belzer & Katherine Albrecht
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