The small size of the structure suggests no more than 30 individuals are probably being held at any given time. It may be a way-station for VIP terror targets as they are captured, interrogated, and then moved to a larger facility such as GITMO when it is evident they have no more useful information.
Source: MapsOfWar.com
As army private Bradley Manning suffers for his alleged megaleak of secret documents to WikiLeaks, one group of hackers seems determined to make sure that others feel his pain.
Over the weekend, the loose hacker collective Anonymous declared that it will go on the offensive against those who are currently detaining Manning in a Quantico military brig, keeping him in solitary confinement and forcing him to strip nightly and stand at attention naked each morning.
In a crowdsourced document used to coordinate the group’s actions, Anonymous members name Department of Defense Press Secretary Geoff Morell and chief warrant officer Denise Barnes as targets and call on members to dig up personal information on both, including phone numbers, personal histories and home addresses. The goal of the operation, for now, is to “dox” the two officials, the typical Anonymous method of publishing personal information of victims and using it for mass harassment.
“Targets established,” reads the document, before naming Morell and Barnes. “We’re in the ruining business. And business is good.”
The group, which is calling its attack “Operation Bradical,” also lists demands as follows:
“Manning must be given sheets, blankets, any religious texts he desires, adequate reading material, clothes, and a ball. One week. Otherwise, we continue to dox and ruin those responsible for keeeping him naked, without bedding, without any of the basic amenities that were provided even to captured Nazis in WWII.”
One member of Anonymous, who tells me he’s not associated with the action, says that doxing will likely include “ruin life tactics” such as “ordering them pizza, sending them thousands of boxes, reporting them to police for drug abuse, sex offenders list, tricking their ISPs into canceling the Internet, messing with their social security numbers, false flag, fax harassment, phone harassment, email bombing, subscriptions to magazines, diapers, tampons.”
Nasty as they may be, those tactics seem relatively harmless in comparison to the attack that Anonymous recently launched against the security firm HBGary Federal in retaliation for one executive’s threats to unmask leaders of the hacker group. HBGary Federal chief executive Aaron Barr had his email archive hacked and published online along with that of his colleagues. HBGary Federal’s website was defaced and Barr’s Twitter account hijacked. After a series of scandals were revealed in the company’s published emails including a plan to launch cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns against WikiLeaks, Barr resigned last week.
Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown told the Tech Herald that harassment of Quantico officials will be just the first step in a “media war” against those detaining Manning. “Manning is an absolute hero,” Brown told the news site. “If this means me going to fucking prison, then that’s fine.”
Last week Manning was hit with 22 charges for his alleged role in a massive leak of classified information to WikiLeaks, including a charge of “aiding the enemy” that can carry a penalty of death. Since those charges were filed, Manning has been forced to strip naked nightly in a tactic that Quantico officials say is legal and aims to prevent suicide attempts, but others claim is designed to degrade and punish the young private. According to Manning’s lawyer David Coombs, Quantico officials have declined to state their full reasons for Manning’s stripping publicly to avoid “a violation of PFC Manning’s privacy.”
“The Brig’s treatment of PFC Manning is shameful,” Coombs wrote in a statement Saturday. “It is made even more so by the Brig hiding behind concerns for ‘[PFC] Manning’s privacy.’ There is no justification, and there can be no justification, for treating a detainee in this degrading and humiliating manner.”
Source: Forbes
Imprisoned for 27 years for a rape he didn’t commit, Michael Anthony Green walked out of jail a free man on Friday and in the process was able to leave behind some of the anger that had fueled his survival behind bars.
Accompanied by his attorney, Green walked out of the Harris County Jail and into the arms of about 20 family members who cheered him.
“Live life,” Green said, when asked what he is going to do now.
Green, 44, was released after the Harris County District Attorney’s Office reopened his case and new DNA tests it commissioned showed he did not commit the 1983 rape of a woman who had been abducted. During a court hearing Friday, a judge ordered that Green be released on a $500 bond, allowing him to be free while the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals makes a final ruling on his innocence.
Asked what kept him going the last 27 years, Green said that in part it was his anger.
“I took and channeled my anger into studying the law,” said Green, clutching a photograph of his mother, who died while he was in prison. “That’s how I lived, day by day … doing what I did. Get up in the law, try to find me a way out.”
Some of the anger that Green had held onto for so many years came to the surface on Thursday, when he had been originally scheduled to be freed on bond. His release was delayed to give him time to calm down after he became upset that he was put in handcuffs and leg restraints one final time as he was taken from the county jail to the courthouse, said Bob Wicoff, his attorney. Green said he got upset because one of the deputies escorting him tightened his handcuffs and threatened him.
Wicoff called it a misunderstanding but said Green was justified in his anger as his life had been taken away. Green entered prison at age 18. Some of the nieces and nephews who greeted him on Friday hadn’t been born when he was locked up.
Green said that while in prison, he didn’t give up hope, writing to state lawmakers, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and others proclaiming his innocence and asking that his case be reviewed.
In 1983, four men abducted a woman from a pay telephone in north Houston, taking her to a remote location where three of them raped her. The men drove off, leaving the woman there, and were later chased by police. The men abandoned their car and fled on foot. Green was detained by officers that night as he walked in the area.
The victim could not identify Green in person when he was first detained but later picked him from a photo lineup as one of her attackers. Green was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 75 years in prison. He was the only person convicted in the case.
After District Attorney Pat Lykos was elected in 2008, she formed the Post-Conviction Review Section and it chose Green’s case as one of the first to look at. The review team found the only remaining evidence in the case — clothing worn by the victim during the rape — and had it tested. The results excluded Green.
Authorities were able to identify the four men who abducted the women. But because the statute of limitations on the rape has run out, they cannot be prosecuted.
“The tragedy in the Green case is not only was an innocent man in prison, the victim was denied justice, society was denied justice and the real criminals were free,” Lykos said Friday.
Lykos declined to criticize her predecessors when asked why it took so long for Green’s case to be reviewed. She said DNA testing was not available when Green was convicted, it didn’t come to the forefront until the 1990s and that even now Harris County — the country’s third-largest county — doesn’t have the resources to do all the testing it needs to do.
Green said he was grateful for the efforts by the district attorney’s office.
He and his attorney blame bad police work for his wrongful imprisonment, saying improperly suggestive identification procedures that were used in photo spreads and a live lineup helped lead to the victim incorrectly identifying Green as one of her attackers.
Houston police have declined to comment on Green’s case.
Wicoff said Green forgives the victim but is unsure if he will ever forgive the police.
Adrian Taylor, 50, Green’s older brother, said he’s disappointed it took so long for his brother to be released but now he wants to help him look to the future.
“I now have to get him to forgive, forgive and move on,” Taylor said
Source: Raw Story
More than seven years ago, a suspected Afghan militant was brought to a dimly lit CIA compound northeast of the airport in Kabul. The CIA called it the Salt Pit. Inmates knew it as the dark prison.
Inside a chilly cell, the man was shackled and left half-naked. He was found dead, exposed to the cold, in the early hours of Nov. 20, 2002.
The Salt Pit death was the only fatality known to have occurred inside the secret prison network the CIA operated abroad after the Sept. 11 attacks. The death had strong repercussions inside the CIA. It helped lead to a review that uncovered abuses in detention and interrogation procedures, and forced the agency to change those procedures.
Little has emerged about the Afghan’s death, which the Justice Department is investigating. The Associated Press has learned the dead man’s name, as well as new details about his capture in Pakistanand his Afghan imprisonment.
The man was Gul Rahman (gool RAHK’-mahn), a suspected militant captured on Oct. 29, 2002, a U.S. official familiar with the case confirmed. The official said Rahman was taken during an operation against Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, an insurgent group headed by Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (gool-boo-DEEN’ hek-mat-YAR’) and allied with al-Qaida.
Rahman’s identity also was confirmed by a former U.S. official familiar with the case, as well as by several other former and current officials. A reference to Rahman’s death also turned up in a recently declassified government document.
The CIA’s program of waterboarding and other harsh treatment of suspected terrorists has been debated since it ended in 2006. The Salt Pit case stands as a cautionary tale about the unfettered use of such practices. The Obama administration shut the CIA’s prisons last year.
It remains uncertain whether any intelligence officers have been punished as a result of the Afghan’s death, raising questions about the CIA’s accountability in the case. The CIA’s then-station chief in Afghanistan was promoted after Rahman’s death, and the officer who ran the prison went on to other assignments, including one overseas, several former intelligence officials said.
The CIA declined to discuss the Salt Pit case and denied a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the AP.
Rahman was taken into custody in Islamabad with four others. They included Dr. Ghairat Baheer, a physician who is Hekmatyar’s son-in-law and a leader of Hezb-e-Islami, an insurgent faction blamed for numerous bombings and violence in Afghanistan.
Baheer, who said he spent six months in the Salt Pit during six years in Afghan prisons, said in an interview in Islamabad that he never learned what happened to Rahman. Rahman’s family repeatedly pressed International Red Cross officials about his fate, Baheer said.
“If he died there in interrogation or he died a natural death, they should have told his family and ended their uncertainty,” Baheer said.
This account of the Salt Pit case was assembled from documents and interviews with both militants and officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials. The Americans spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the case remain classified.
Equipment that jams cell phones will get its first federally sanctioned test inside a prison in Maryland this week, as state officials try to show Congress how the technology can prevent inmates from using the contraband devices to commit crimes, a governor’s spokesman said Tuesday.
The state wants to show the equipment can be used without interfering with emergency response and legitimate signals outside the prison perimeter, said Shaun Adamec, Gov. Martin O’Malley’s spokesman.
The Federal Communication Commission can only allow federal agencies — not state or local authorities — permission to jam cell phone signals. But a bill that passed the Senate and awaits action by the House would allow states to petition the FCC to block the use of cell phones from prisons.
Testing is set to begin Wednesday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Adamec said. The governor has strongly backed allowing states to use the jamming technology to battle the growing problem of cell phone use in prisons.
A bipartisan measure sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., was approved by the Senate in September. A companion bill is in the House.
“I think all of this can help Senator Mikulski in her efforts to pass a bill, and hopefully if the FCC sees it coming they might just do it by regulation,” O’Malley said.
The tests are being conducted to provide more information about the technology as the legislation is being considered.
Prisons around the nation have been trying to stem rising problems from prison inmates using cell phones to coordinate criminal activity from behind bars. Officials in New Jersey even intercepted a conference call among gang members from different prisons who were plotting retaliation against another gang member.
Read more at: Feds allow prison phone jamming test (Ap)
New Zealand Jams cell phones in prison – Jamming the phone in the cell (New Zealand Department of Corrections)
California’s Governor, in an attempt to to save the state billions of dollars, has suggested that they build cheaper prisons south of the border.
“We can do so much better, in the prison system alone, if we can go and take inmates – for instance, the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here – and get them to Mexico,” Schwarzenegger said.
“We pay them to build a prison down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in the prison,” he added. “Half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons. That is money, again, a billion dollars right there that can go into higher education. That is an example of one of the things we do that is unnecessary spending.”
Schwarzenegger asks: Why not build prisons in Mexico? (Sacramento Bee)
The secret Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedure (2003) was clandestinely released to Wikileaks. These are the rules governing the day to day operations at Camp Delta.
Its release revealed some of the restrictions placed over detainees at the camp, including the designation of some prisoners as off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, something that the U.S. military had in the past repeatedly denied.
Wikileaks has since released a copy of the 2004 edition of the manual, together with a detailed analysis of the changes.
View the entire Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedure (2003)
During his campaign for election, Barack Obama promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He said, on many occasions, that he would close Camp X-ray within the first year of his presidency.
His year is up!
After a year of “closing” the prison, 200 prisoners remain in the facility. Many of those, still in detention, have been there for eight years. 800 prisoners have been released so far. Of those let go, only one has been found guilty of any crime. He was convicted by a dubious military commission, a verdict that is likely to be overturned.
How does one survive in a detention facility for years? Ask Omar Deghayes.
“For nearly six years, British resident Omar Deghayes was imprisoned in Guantánamo and subjected to such brutal torture that he lost the sight in one eye. But far from being broken, he fought back to retain his dignity and his sanity.
Deghayes developed a personal policy of resistance. Guards would typically arrive at a prisoner’s cell and spray pepper and other chemicals through the “bean-hole”, the hatch in the door. While most prisoners cowered at the back of their cell, Deghayes says he would grab the guards’ hands and attack them. He fought back, as viciously as he could, trying to take the fights with guards out of the privacy of his cell and into the corridors.
“It was chaos; they would fall on top of each other and it was embarrassing [for them]. They were wearing all this heavy stuff [body armour] which didn’t help either,” he says. Some guards became afraid of going into his cell. Most, he says, were Puerto Rican and were not driven by the patriotism of the “war on terror”. They did not want to get hurt for their meagre wages.”
How I fought to survive Guantánamo (Guardian UK)
It has been one year since Barack Obama signed the executive order essentially outlawing torture, but the debate about interrogation methods continue. Although the situation has improved, the changes were not as drastic as most Americans think. Elements of the US interrogation policy remain inhumane and counterproductive.
Americans can now boast that they no longer “torture” detainees, but they cannot say that detainees are not abused, or even that their treatment meets the minimum standards of humane treatment mandated by the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (the McCain amendment), US law, international law, or President Obama’s executive order.
If one were to visit one of the war zones today, as an a member of an Air Force interrogation team, they would still be allowed to abuse prisoners.
This is true even though in my experience, torture or even harsh but legal treatment never got us useful information. Instead, such tactics invariably did just the opposite, convincing detainees to clam up.
Matthew Alexander – Author of “How to Break a Terrorist.”
Read Matthew Alexander’s Op-Ed – Torture’s Loopholes (NY Times)
Afghan Boys Allegedly Abused At Bagram “Black Prison”
The Stanford prison experiment was designed to study the psychological effects of being either a prisoner or prison guard. The 1971 experiment was conducted by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four students were selected to play the roles of both guards and prisoners. They were to live in a mock prison created in the basement of the psychology building. Their roles were assigned randomly. The students adapted to their roles well beyond what was expected, leading the guards to display authoritarian and even draconian measures. The experiment was scheduled to run for 2 weeks but was abruptly stopped after only six days.
“It became clear that we had to end the study. We had created an overwhelmingly powerful situation — a situation in which prisoners were withdrawing and behaving in pathological ways, and in which some of the guards were behaving sadistically.”
