[News] Prisoner-abuse scandal at home

[News at freedomarchives.org]

<http://www.salon.com/>http://www.salon.com


The prisoner-abuse scandal at home
The stories sound familiar: Muslim prisoners beaten and sexually humiliated 
by American guards. But it happened in Brooklyn, not Baghdad.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Michelle Goldberg

May 19, 2004  |  BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- The American guards took Mohamed Maddy's 
glasses before they slammed him into the wall. A portly middle-aged father 
of two, Maddy was crying, trying to move his shoulder in front of him so it 
would take the blow, but they kept smashing him into the concrete, leaving 
him with dark purple bruises. Then they told him to strip, and when he 
balked at removing his underwear -- "I am Muslim, I can't do it," he said 
-- they screamed, "Fucking Muslim! Take them off!"

They made him bend over and said, "Take your hand and open your ass." He 
sobbed harder as they performed a cavity search. Afterward, they told him 
to get dressed and put him in handcuffs and leg irons connected by a chain 
to his waist. They ordered him to run and then stepped on his leg chain so 
he'd fall down, only to be yanked back up and forced to run again, over and 
over. Without his glasses, Maddy couldn't see where he was going, but he 
thinks he was running in circles.

Finally he was thrown in a cell. For the first month, the light was left on 
24 hours a day. If he tried to shield his eyes and snatch a moment of 
sleep, the guards would kick the doors. On the rare occasions when he was 
taken out, he was strip-searched, often twice in the same day, even if he 
hadn't been out of the guards' sight. Sometimes they did the searches in 
public. Sometimes they laughed and jeered. An official report later 
concluded that many of these searches had nothing to do with safety -- they 
were about punishment and humiliation.

Stories like Maddy's have lately been pouring out of Iraq and Afghanistan, 
but he's never been to those countries. Maddy's ordeal took place at the 
Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where 84 of the 762 Muslim 
immigrants who were detained after Sept. 11 were held. The torture there 
wasn't nearly as severe as it was at Abu Ghraib, and, according to recent 
reports, at Guantánamo in Cuba. But there are striking similarities, 
suggesting that what happened in Iraq may be an escalation of a pattern of 
human rights violations that began almost as soon as the World Trade Center 
crumbled.

In April 2003, as the war in Iraq dominated the headlines, the Justice 
Department's Office of the Inspector General issued a 239-page report 
titled "The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens 
Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the 
September 11 Attacks." Then, in December, the Inspector General's Office 
issued a supplemental 49-page report detailing abuses at the Metropolitan 
Detention Center, where Maddy was held. In its May 24 issue, Newsweek 
revealed that attorneys for two detainees are pressing to release 300 hours 
of videotape that captured the abuses -- tapes that were cited in the 
reports on the detention center, but that have never been made public.

As the reports document, prisoners being held at MDC in connection with 
Sept. 11 were regularly stripped and sexually humiliated. Prolonged sleep 
deprivation was common. Guards regularly slammed inmates against walls. 
Several detainees claimed they were also punched and kicked. In Passaic 
County Jail, prisoners were menaced with dogs. At several prisons, people 
were put in solitary confinement for weeks or even months. They were denied 
access to visitors. Many were never charged with any crime.

The reports paint a picture of mass roundups conducted without probable 
cause, followed by "prolonged confinement for many detainees, sometimes 
under extremely harsh conditions." It lists some of the rather specious 
justifications given for classifying people as Sept. 11 detainees. One man 
was "arrested, detained on immigration charges, and treated as a September 
11 detainee because a person called the FBI to report that the [redacted] 
grocery store in which the alien worked, is operated by numerous Middle 
Eastern men, 24 hrs -- 7 days a week. Each shift daily has 2 or 3 men ... 
Store was closed day after crash, reopened days and evenings. Then later on 
opened during midnight hours. Too many people to run a small store."

Something similar seems to have happened in Iraq, where the Red Cross 
estimated that between 70 and 90 percent of the inmates at Abu Ghraib were 
innocent. On May 5, a U.N. working group on arbitrary detention issued a 
statement saying, "According to the information received by the Working 
Group, the majority of persons in detention in Iraq have been arrested 
during public demonstrations, at checkpoints and in house raids. They are 
being considered 'security detainees' or 'suspected of anti-Coalition 
activities'. The Working Group's Chairperson-Rapporteur is seriously 
disturbed by the fact that these persons have not been granted access to a 
court to be able to challenge the lawfulness of their detention, as 
required by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

Policies of arbitrary detention often lead to coercive interrogation and 
abuse, says David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown University and 
author of "Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in 
the War on Terrorism." In both America and Iraq, he says, "the approach was 
to sweep broadly, to pick people up on little or no evidence other than 
their religious or ethnic identity. That process puts a premium on 
interrogation because the whole idea is that we don't know how the bad guys 
are, so your job as an interrogator is to find out who they are through 
interrogation. When they say we don't know anything about it, it's going to 
put pressure on interrogators to use coercive methods. Anytime you abandon 
the presumption of innocence and adopt a broad, sweeping detention policy, 
it's going to lead to questionable interrogation tactics."

It's not clear whether the guards in Brooklyn and those in Baghdad adopted 
similar tactics independently, or whether they were acting under similar 
orders. As Seymour Hersh has reported in the New Yorker, the Defense 
Department authorized policies in Guantánamo and Iraq that were designed to 
enable interrogations. According to Hersh, they included sexual 
humiliation, sleep deprivation, "exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and 
placing prisoners in 'stress positions' for agonizing lengths of time."

Milder versions of these methods were employed at MDC, but there's no 
evidence that guards there were acting under orders from federal officials. 
Still, says Cole, "[R]eports of [abuse] are so consistent among domestic 
detainees that it seems it must have been a policy choice. Assuming the 
best of the policy makers, would assume they're doing it for interrogation 
purposes."

Regardless of who ordered the abuse, prison officials were operating under 
loosened legal constraints that encouraged mistreatment. "There was a 
perception of guilt imposed in both cases," says Nancy Chang, senior 
litigation attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Those detained 
in America, like those in Guantánamo and Iraq, "were abused as enemy 
combatants or potential enemy combatants. They were treated quite 
differently from regular prisoners. They were placed under the most extreme 
conditions of confinement without any prior determination that they posed a 
danger."

In both the United States and Iraq, the tactics were similar, even if the 
severity was not.

Images of the abuse at Abu Ghraib have forced Mohamed Maddy to relive the 
eight months he spent in American prisons, and especially the months he 
spent at the special housing unit at the Metropolitan Detention Center. "I 
can see that it is almost the same," he writes in an e-mail from Cairo, 
where he's lived with his two sons since being deported in May 2002. "[W]e 
were all pushed viciously against the wall, hands tied behind back, chains 
on both legs, lots of hits on the face and the rest of the body, severe 
humiliation like I never saw before, they were cursing us almost every 
minute of the day and prevented us from sleeping. In brief, the treatment 
was very inhuman and against all human rights and ethics."

Of course, this may sound like the hyperbole of a traumatized man, but the 
inspector general's report on conditions at MDC confirm most of what he 
says. "[W]e concluded that it was inappropriate for staff members in the 
ADMAX SHU [Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit] to routinely film 
strip searches showing the detainees naked, and that on occasion staff 
members inappropriately used strip searches to intimidate and punish 
detainees," the report says. It cites videotapes of the strip searches in 
which the voices of female officers can clearly be heard, confirming 
detainees' reports that they were stripped in front of women. On some 
tapes, the report says, "staff members laughed, exchanged suggestive looks 
and made funny noises before and during strip searches."

The report also found evidence of routine physical abuse. "[W]e concluded, 
based on videotape evidence, detainees' statements, witnesses' 
observations, and staff members who corroborated some allegations of abuse, 
that some MDC staff members slammed and bounced detainees into the walls at 
the MDC and inappropriately pressed detainees' heads against walls," the 
report says. "We also found that some officers inappropriately twisted and 
bent detainees' arms, hands, wrists, and fingers, and caused them 
unnecessary physical pain; inappropriately carried or lifted detainees; and 
raised or pulled detainees' arms in painful ways. In addition, we believe 
some officers improperly used handcuffs, occasionally stepped on compliant 
detainees' leg restraint chains, and were needlessly forceful and rough 
with the detainees -- all conduct that violates [Bureau of Prisons] policy."

There were also numerous reports that, in addition to the lights being left 
on in the cell for 24 hours a day, officers went out of their way to keep 
detainees awake. "For example, one detainee claimed that officers kicked 
the doors non-stop in order to keep the detainees from sleeping," the 
inspector general's report says. "He stated that for the first two or three 
weeks he was at the MDC, one of the officers walked by about every 15 
minutes throughout the night, kicked the doors to wake up the detainees, 
and yelled things such as, 'Motherfuckers,' 'Assholes,' and 'Welcome to 
America.' ... Another detainee said that officers would not let the 
detainees sleep during the day or night from the time he arrived at the MDC 
in the beginning of October through mid-November 2001."

Almost all the 9/11 prisoners at MDC were being held for interrogation, not 
because police had any evidence connecting them to terrorism. Maddy was one 
of the few in the unit who had actually committed a crime -- while working 
for a passenger services company at JFK airport, he had smuggled his wife 
and sons into the country.

Today, Maddy lives in a cacophonous Cairo suburb where car horns compete 
with mournful Arab pop singers and small boys driving donkey carts clatter 
down dusty side streets. He's a hospitable man who cooks me a dinner of 
grilled chicken and Greek salad while his teenage sons, Eslam and Karim, 
play a James Bond video game on their Xbox and listen to the soundtrack 
from Eminem's "8 Mile." Friendly as he is, though, he can't hide a sadness 
that's made him lose interest in everything in the world except his boys 
and his misfortunes.

In prison, he was questioned "six, seven or eight times," he says, usually 
about how often he went to the mosque and whether he knows any "bad people 
in the USA." Not being a radical man -- he has a picture of Bill Clinton 
hanging on the wall of his Cairo apartment -- he was little help. "I tell 
them the truth, but they say, 'You are liar,'" he says.

Indeed, several detainees say it was their professions of innocence that 
led to weeks of solitary confinement and other torments.

Khaled Betar, 34, is a happy-go-lucky blue-eyed bachelor from Amman, 
Jordan, whose friends know him as a bit of a womanizer. Radical Islam holds 
no attraction for him -- he's an agnostic who tends to see both his Arab 
and Muslim identity as an accident of birth. The first time he prayed to 
Allah was when he was thrown in prison by FBI agents who accused him of 
membership in al-Qaida.

Before arriving in America, Betar spent time working in both South Africa 
and Hamburg, Germany. He traveled to America in April 2001 for the same 
reason many immigrants do -- to earn money. A Jordanian family he knew 
owned a gas station in Stony Point, N.Y., and they gave him a job that paid 
around $2,000 a month -- nearly 10 times what he could make at home.

Betar had a six-month tourist visa that was still valid in late September 
2001, when FBI agents showed up at his apartment to question him. "They 
asked me if I know any people who give speeches in the mosque, if I'm 
religious or not," he says. "They spoke to me for, like, half an hour and 
they asked me about my passport. I showed them my visa." The visa would 
expire in a week.

Knowing that, the agents waited 10 days before visiting Betar again. When 
they returned, there were two immigration agents with them. "They told me, 
your visa expired and you have to go with us to the detention," he says.

Betar would spend the next nine months in Passaic County Jail, where he was 
held as a material witness to the Sept. 11 attacks. "He was never charged 
with terrorism, never charged with being a threat to national security," 
says his attorney, Sin Yen Ling of the Asian American Legal Defense and 
Education Fund. "There were never any formal charges."

But there were many interrogations. Seven of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers 
spent time in Hamburg, a city with a Muslim population of 130,000. Betar 
had lived there, too, and investigators were convinced there was a connection.

During his first interview, there were four FBI agents. They showed him 
pictures of some of the hijackers, and asked if he knew them. "They told me 
one of the hijackers was in Germany," he says. "They said, 'How come you 
are Muslim and you don't know this guy?' That's what they told me! I told 
them, man, I can't know every Muslim!"

A few weeks later, the agents asked him if he would take a polygraph. He 
readily agreed, but after hours of questioning, he was told that he failed 
(he's never seen the transcript, and it wasn't given to his attorney). 
Several days later, he was given a second polygraph. Again, he was told 
that he failed, and he was taken to the hole. The guard told Betar he was 
acting on the FBI's orders.

"I was in a small cell. It's closed. There was an iron bed and mattress and 
blanket, that's all that you have. I stayed there 24 days. All the time, 
they keep the light on. Every day they came with dogs. The dogs made noise. 
Every day they took me from the room to search me. I'm in the room, how can 
I get anything?"

When he returned to the prison's general population after 24 days, "It was 
like a paradise for me," he says. "You can't imagine. The hole is terrible. 
It was the worst 24 days of my life. They make you crazy, really."

There was pressure, he says, to admit to some role in Sept. 11. "They just 
want me to say I know one of these people," he says. "They want anybody. If 
you are innocent, it doesn't matter for them. They just want to put anybody 
in the jail, to show people that they are working. If this happened in 
Syria, Iraq, it's normal, but in America it's different, really."

Eventually, though, the FBI cleared Betar of any terrorist ties, and he was 
deported back to Jordan.

A resilient man, Betar seems to have largely put his ordeal behind him. 
"Now, I'm all right," he says in Amman, where he and a friend have started 
a business selling nuts. "Sometimes you remember, you get depressed, but 
I'm normal now. I'm OK."

Maddy, who's found a job as an Internet marketing manager for a Cairo 
tourism company, hasn't done as well. He has memory lapses and trouble 
concentrating. "Sometimes at my job, it goes in my mind, everything that 
happened in the USA. I get nervous and have to leave what I'm doing. Never 
I forget. Everything's like videotape. I remember even when I'm sleeping. I 
don't feel safe when I'm sleeping. I don't feel good about my life." He 
wants to sue the Justice Department, but knows little about the American 
legal system, and isn't sure where to look for a lawyer to represent him 
pro bono.

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, something further seemed to break in 
him. Shortly after the first pictures of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqis 
were published, he fired off an uncharacteristic message full of profanity 
and rage. "How much the American people hate the Muslim people!" he writes. 
"[W]e hate the stupid Bush and I will be happy when he go to the hell in 
November and I want tell him go, not come back. Fuck you Bush and your 
government."

Two days later, he was mortified by his outburst. "I would like to express 
my apology for using an inappropriate language, but I have bitter feelings 
that squeeze my heart and soul," he writes in a second e-mail. "It sounds 
like it is a policy for the American government to treat Arabs, especially 
Muslims, as bad as they can, and it is totally untrue that the behavior was 
individual incidents carried [out] by several guards."

"What I have saw with the Iraqi people made me feel very sick. It was 
really disgusting and made me review all that happened to me," he says.

Maddy wasn't terribly religious before, but in prison he moved closer to 
God, he says. Now, he fantasizes about suing the United States for what it 
put him through, and using the money to build a big mosque, white, with a 
green light shining from the minaret.

But first, he says, "I will give some money to my sons, so they don't need 
to go to the USA."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Michelle Goldberg is a staff writer for Salon based in New York.

Copyright 2004 Salon.com
Salon, 22 4th Street, 11th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103
Telephone 415 645-9200 | Fax 415 645-9204
<http://www.salon.com/about/staff/index.html>E-mail | 
<http://www.salon.com/about/policy/index.html>Salon.com Privacy Policy | 
<http://www.salon.com/about/tos/index.html>Terms of Service




The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20040519/ec269425/attachment.htm>