The Progressive
http://www.progressive.org/0901/amc0302.html
March 2002 Issue
Ill-Treatment on Our Shores
by Anne-Marie Cusac
On October 24, Muhammed Butt died of a heart attack at the
Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny, New Jersey. Butt, a
Pakistani national, was detained on September 19 by the FBI as a
suspect connected with the September 11 attacks. He was then
transferred to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS),
which charged him with a visa violation.
The New Jersey state medical examiner conducted a preliminary
autopsy that showed Butt "died of natural causes related to a
heart ailment," Emily Hornaday, a spokesperson for the state
Division of Criminal Justice, told The Washington Post. On
October 1, reported The Nation, "Butt underwent a routine
physical. His blood pressure and medical findings were normal."
However, the dentist prescribed a five-day regimen of antibiotics for
gingivitis. "That's all he complained about," county
spokesman Jacob De Lemos told The Washington Post.
Butt's cell mate at the Hudson County facility tells a different
story. On January 27, César Muñoz and Allyson Collins of Human
Rights Watch visited the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey.
Both say they met with the cell mate, whose name the group is not
releasing. Muñoz says he is concerned the prisoner could suffer
retribution for speaking out.
Collins and Muñoz say the cell mate told them Butt's collapse
was anything but sudden. "Even days before, he wasn't feeling
well," relays Collins, associate director of Human Rights
Watch's U.S. program.
"What the roommate told us was he helped Butt fill out
request forms" for medical attention, says Muñoz, a Bloomberg
Fellow with the group. "He told us Butt filled out five or
six." Butt's written requests began about ten days before his
death, Muñoz was told. "He would fill out one and wait two
days. When there was no answer, he'd fill out another one,"
Muñoz says, paraphrasing the cell mate. Butt "never got any
answer."
On the day he died, "at around 6 o'clock [a.m.], Butt said
he was feeling pain," continues Muñoz. "He banged on the
door for five or ten minutes." Getting no response, "Butt
went back to sleep. He never woke up." The cell mate, say both
human-rights advocates, found Butt later that morning.
The INS denies the claims. "We have absolutely no
information to substantiate any of the allegations being propagated
by Human Rights Watch," says Kerry Gill, an INS public affairs
officer in Newark. "This is the first we are hearing allegations
like that."
The allegations of mistreatment are not confined to Butt's case.
Many others who were rounded up on orders of Attorney General John
Ashcroft after September 11 claim to have been beaten, locked in
solitary confinement, injected with substances against their will, or
denied blankets, food, and toilet paper. Their allegations are
generating media attention and prompting human rights organizations
to demand that the U.S. government treat the detainees in a manner
that conforms to international law.
In November, Amnesty International sent Ashcroft a document
entitled "Memorandum to the U.S. Attorney General--Amnesty
International's Concerns Relating to the Post 11 September
Investigations." Drawing on numerous interviews with detainees
and their lawyers, the organization expressed concern "that many
of those detained during the 11 September sweeps are held in harsh
conditions, some of which may violate international standards for
humane treatment." The memorandum cites "allegations of
physical and verbal abuse of detainees by guards, and failure to
protect detainees from abuses by other inmates," as well as
"reports suggesting that immigration detainees arrested after 11
September are being subjected to more punitive conditions than before
in some facilities" and "reports that people of Muslim or
Middle-Eastern origin are treated more harshly than other
in-mates."
Traci Billingsley, spokes-person for the United States Bureau of
Prisons, says she doesn't "have any public information on any
individual detainee." But she denies that any prisoner in a
federal institution has been mistreated. "All inmates are
treated in a fair, impartial manner and are treated in a humane
way," she says.
Russ Bergeron is the chief press officer for the INS. Regarding
claims that some detainees at INS facilities were not fed during
interrogations, Bergeron says such events are "the exception
rather than the rule" and that "the policy of Immigration
and those facilities is not to withhold meals."
In response to allegations that INS detainees were held in
isolation, Bergeron says, "I don't even see that as an
allegation." Isolation, he says, "is an appropriate and
recognized process in a detention environment, especially if you have
an individual who is a subject of an ongoing criminal investigation,
and all these individuals are, or were at some point in time, the
subject of a terrorist investigation." The INS adds that it is
against policy to deny blankets.
County jails also dispute the complaints against them.
Michael J. Wildes used to be a federal prosecutor. He now
represents five Israeli detainees who were stopped near the George
Washington Bridge shortly after the attacks of September 11.
According to Wildes, they were "caught horsing around with the
backdrop of the World Trade Center behind them."
One of the five, Oded Ellner, alleges that he was injected with
"a series of shots" at the Metropolitan Detention Center in
Brooklyn. "He thought it was under the guise of stopping
sexually transmitted diseases," says Wildes. "He didn't
know what substance was being injected into him."
Ellner is now in Israel. He declined to talk in detail about his
allegations. "I can't do an interview on what happened to me in
the jail because I don't want to remember what happened to me in the
jail," he says. "All I want now is a peaceful
life."
Wildes's other clients allege being "beaten up by INS
guards, and left by the guards to be beaten up" by other
inmates, he says. "It's unconscionable" that the government
is punishing innocent people for something it "allowed to
happen" by not keeping good enough track of suspected terrorists
living in the United States.
And he has a warning for the United States. "As we respond
to terrorists, I think it's important we respond with measure and not
in the manner of those who want to hurt the U.S. We must temper our
response with justice," says Wildes, "or put in jeopardy
that which we're trying to protect."
Steven Gordon, a New York-based attorney, is a member of the
firm the five Israelis retained. (Wildes is of counsel to that firm.)
Gordon says that the five detainees "were in solitary for two
months." Two of the men suffered beatings at the hands of
guards, he says. One was Omer Marmari. "Guards took him out of
the cell he was in and put him in one that didn't have the video
camera," Gordon says. Then they "moved his body across the
box springs, and his legs got all cut up."
Another detainee, Sivan Kurzberg, was also beaten up, says
Gordon. Guards hit Kurzberg "about the head and body and pushed
his face up against the wall for no apparent reason," Gordon
says.
All five have been deported and are now in Israel.
On February 2, Federal District Court Judge Shira A. Scheindlin
of Manhattan ordered a hearing into allegations that federal agents
violated the rights of Jordanian citizen Osama Awadallah. The
allegations "suggest that he may have been the victim of
coercion and intimidation," wrote Scheindlin. News reports said
the alleged mistreatment might be enough to justify dismissal of the
charge of perjury against Awadallah. A student at Grossmont College
in El Cajon, California, Awadallah had denied being a casual
acquaintance of one of the September 11 hijackers, something he later
contradicted. The perjury charge could lead to a ten-year prison
sentence.
According to the pretrial motion that Awadallah's attorney,
Jesse Berman, filed on December 3, Awadallah "was not advised of
any rights, not Miranda rights, not the right to refuse to consent to
searches of his home, not the right to refuse to consent to searches
of his automobiles, not his right to speak with the Jordanian
consulate. Defendant was twenty-one years old and had never been
arrested. There was no Arabic interpreter."
At the San Diego Metropolitan Correctional Center, the court
filings say, the mistreatment only got worse. "Defendant, who is
an observant Muslim, was not allowed to have a Koran. For five days,
he was denied Muslim halal food [which conforms to specific
dietary laws]. He was not allowed a shower for the first three or
four days, and was not allowed to have toilet paper or soap for the
first two days. For two days, his cell floor was flooded with water,
preventing him from kneeling and praying."
On October 1, Awadallah was flown to New York, where he entered
Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). During his time
there, a guard "pushed defendant, who was handcuffed, into a
wall and into a door," the complaint says. "Defendant's
hand started bleeding. The guard also kicked defendant's leg shackles
and pulled defendant's head by the hair to make defendant face an
American flag."
The document says Awadallah also suffered harm at the hands of
U.S. Marshals, who, while transporting him to court, allegedly
"pinched his upper arms while his hands were cuffed behind his
back and attached to his feet. They kicked his feet in an elevator.
Defendant was bleeding from his left foot and suffered black-and-blue
marks on his arms. A supervisor marshal threatened to kill
him."
According to court documents filed by Mary Jo White, U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of New York, "The Government
does not condone or lightly dismiss allegations of mistreatment of
prisoners by prison authorities. . . . The Bureau of Prisons
addressed the defendant's claims, and acknowledged that the defendant
was likely bruised during his escort by staff, but found that none of
his injuries indicated that he was assaulted or physically
abused."
Awadallah was released on December 13. He spent his entire
ten-week detention in solitary confinement, says Berman, who
characterizes some of what his client suffered as
"torture." "He's a person who's twenty-one years old,
never in trouble in his life," says Berman. "He had never
experienced being locked up before, so it was very hard."
There are plenty of other cases. Shakir Baloch, a medical doctor
and a Canadian citizen originally from Pakistan, was held for two
months in solitary confinement in a high security unit at the
Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, according to his lawyer,
Joel Kupferman, of the National Lawyers Guild, and MacDonald Scott,
the membership coordinator for the organization. For two weeks, both
advocates claim, he was denied toilet paper. He also says that he is
not being served halal food.
Scott, who is also an activist with the Coalition for the Human
Rights of Immigrants, says when Baloch first entered the center,
guards pushed him "from corner to corner of the cell. They were
throwing him back and forth from wall to wall."
One of Baloch's big complaints, his representatives say, is the
fact that the lights in his wing stay on twenty-four hours a day,
which Baloch says interferes with his sleep and is psychologically
damaging.
Kareem Shora, a member of the legal department at the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, heard from the wife of a
detainee who had called her from the Mecklenburg County Jail in
Charlotte, North Carolina. He told her that "all immigration
detainees from Arab countries being held for the INS by the facility
were rounded up and placed in a separate room. The detainees were
then completely stripped of their clothes before what he described as
'cold air' was blown onto them," Shora recounts.
The Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office acknowledges that other
people at the facility have heard the same allegation but denies it
has any validity. "That's just a rumor," says Julia Rush,
director of communications. "We don't treat our inmates like
that."
Waheed Khalid is the vice president of HELP (the Human Rights
Education and Law Project), an organization formed in the wake of
September 11 to educate the public and provide legal assistance to
detainees. "We've been monitoring the detainees in New Jersey,
mostly in Passaic and Hudson Counties and Middlesex," he says.
"Almost everybody said they were taken to 26 Federal Plaza in
New York City--the INS building, the federal building there. The
place where they were kept was very, very cold. Everybody said it was
extremely cold. They could not even sleep for a moment. When they
asked for blankets, they were refused."
Khalid says he heard allegations of denials of blankets from
"at least two dozen" people.
Another detainee, a forty-one-year-old small business owner from
Newburyport, Massachusetts, asks that his name not be used because he
is in the process of applying for his green card. He claims that when
he was interrogated (the day "that I went through Hell"),
he did not have access to food for more than twenty-four hours. On
Thursday, November 29, INS agents "came over here at 5:30 in the
morning, asked me to come" with them. He cooperated, and, he
says, the agents took him to the JFK federal building in Boston.
There, both the INS and the FBI asked him questions, he says, and he
was not fed until the following morning. He gives a charitable
interpretation of that event, saying simply, "I believe someone
forgot to bring food."
For this particular detainee, the hazards of lockup seemed to
decrease as time went on. "At the beginning, when I got in [to
the Intake Service Center in Cranston, Rhode Island], I didn't have
any blankets. I had two sheets and a towel." After two weeks and
requests from his attorney, however, he got both blankets and a
pillow. "I was lucky," he says, noting that others didn't
have pillows.
He was released after a month in detention.
His girlfriend (who also asked that her name not be used, since
she is mentioned in his green card petition) is less charitable in
her analysis of the federal government's behavior.
"This is a man that wouldn't hurt a flea," she says.
"He was exiled from Iran when he was twelve. He came from a very
prominent family. When the Ayatollah took over, that was it."
She notes that her boyfriend has not married during his time in the
United States, though he could easily have done so to get
citizenship. "He did everything right. And still they're nailing
him. These aren't scumbag people they're picking up. They're highly
educated people, and they love this country. They're an asset to this
country. If this were going on in another country and these were
American citizens, they would be considered hostages."
Noting that her boyfriend's business suffered during his
detention, she is furious with the way the government's behavior, and
some of the media's response, has led people to believe that the
detainees are all dangerous. "The way the media portrays it,
these are potential terrorists," she says. "It's slander.
Who is going to associate with my boyfriend if they know this? There
are so many repercussions for these guys that it's not funny. It's a
disgrace to our country."
Some of the detainees claim that other inmates beat them up.
They also raise questions about the complicity of the guards charged
with their care.
Uzi Bohadana found trouble waiting for him at the Madison County
Jail in Canton, Mississippi. Bohadana, a twenty-four-year-old Israeli
citizen who lives in Hollywood, Florida, was arrested on September
14, says his attorney, L. Patricia Ice. "INS alleged he was
working for wages without authorization," she says.
Bohadana says he was driving a truck at the time. The FBI picked
him up at a Canton storage facility "on an allegation that I'm a
suspect of the bombing," he says. The Bureau then transferred
Bohadana to the Madison County Jail for the weekend.
At the jail, says Ice, Bohadana was put in a cell with inmates
who were there on criminal charges.
"After two days, [the other inmates] decide I'm a
terrorist, for some reason," says Bohadana. He ended up with a
broken jaw and seven stitches on the right eye, he says. "I was
hospitalized for two days to make the surgery." Ice says
Bohadana had to have his jaw wired.
Bohadana believes he may have been set up for the beating.
"I don't know who told them because no one knew that except the
guards. Figure it out by yourself," he says. Before the attack,
a guard had been constantly on duty outside the cell, says Ice.
"The guard disappeared for an hour during the attack," she
says. "It was one hour before the guard found him."
The Madison County Jail referred my request for comment to theirHuman Rights Watch and Amnesty International to visit and interview
government detainees. According to a December 14 press release, Human
Rights Watch "requested permission to visit the facilities
because it was concerned by reports of inappropriate treatment and
infringement on detainees' rights. . . . Interviews with former
detainees and with attorneys representing detainees have reinforced
those concerns."
The INS district director in Newark, New Jersey, informed Human
Rights Watch that it would not be allowed access to the Hudson County
Correctional Center because of the "extraordinary"
circumstances. In a turnaround, the INS announced on January 30 that
monitoring groups would be allowed access to the New Jersey
facilities, and several, including both Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International, visited two detention centers on February
6.
As a result of that visit, "we've received several
allegations of verbal and physical abuse by guards at Passaic,"
says Angela Wright, the organization's USA researcher. Wright
mentions one detainee "who said he was hit and another who said
he was slammed against a wall." She also says detainees at
Passaic made allegations "that dogs have been used to
intimidate" them. The INS's Gill says the allegations are too
broad to comment on.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has allowed neither Human Rights
Watch nor Amnesty International to visit the New York City detention
centers. "Recent events require that MDC Brooklyn focus on
operating in a manner that is as safe, secure, and orderly as
possible," says a January 31 letter from Warden Dennis W. Hasty
to Rachel Ward, Amnesty International USA's researcher on the
September 11 probe. "Unfortunately, this has required minimizing
activities not critical to the day-to-day operations of the
institution. Therefore, I must deny your request at this
time."
Ward says the lack of access to the Metropolitan Detention
Center worries the organization, since it has "serious
concerns" about treatment there. "They really ought to open
it to scrutiny," she says.
Not only is the government obstructing investigations into the
conditions of living detainees, it is also busy denying requests for
more information about the circumstances surrounding the death of
Pakistani citizen Muhammed Butt.
Six days after Butt died, Human Rights Watch wrote to the
government, asking for details about his treatment and the cause of
his death. According to Allyson Collins, the organization sought
"information about the medical screening he received when he
arrived" and "any conflicts of any kind with other
detainees." The group wanted to know if he was a troublemaker
whom the prison officials might have been tempted to neglect. Human
Rights Watch also asked for a copy of his autopsy, information on any
medications he was taking when he arrived, any complaints or requests
for help he made while he was detained, what dental work he had done,
and whether he had seen a doctor during his detention.
The INS response, if you can call it that, came on December 6.
The INS declined to provide any information regarding Muhammed Butt,
"due to laws relating to privacy." And it denied it is
withholding information on his death.
The letter, which came from INS headquarters in Washington,
D.C., gets more bizarre when it suggests the group contact the Hudson
County INS office for any further information concerning Butt.
"When you contact the District Director, please be sure to have
written consent from Mr. Butt stating that the office is able to
release information concerning his case to you," it advises.
"This statement should contain his name and your name and his
alien number along with his written signature."
"I am perplexed by the INS's suggestion that we obtain the
signature of a man who has died," responded Collins. "The
death of a detainee is a very serious matter, and we urge the U.S.
government to investigate it fully."
Anne-Marie Cusac is Managing Editor of The
Progressive.