[Ppnews] ACLU suit to challenge isolation prisons
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Thu Jun 18 12:28:05 EDT 2009
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror18-2009jun18,0,5232714.story>http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror18-2009jun18,0,5232714.story
From the Los Angeles Times
ACLU suit to challenge isolation prisons
Civil rights activists question the transfer of inmate Sabri Benkahla
to a federal facility that drastically limits outside contact.
By Dean Kuipers
June 18, 2009
Civil rights activists plan to file a lawsuit today contesting the
transfer of a Tunisian American prisoner to a federal prison facility
that some inmates have dubbed "Little Guantanamo."
The suit by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Sabri
Benkahla could be the first of many challenging the secretive units,
which drastically restrict outside contact.
Benkahla was transferred to the Communications Management Unit in
Terre Haute, Ind., in 2007, eight months after his conviction on
perjury and obstruction of justice charges in a terrorism case.
Prosecutors contended that he lied to a grand jury about his contact
with an alleged Al Qaeda fundraiser and other terrorism suspects.
The Terre Haute unit opened in 2006. Another began operations last
year at the federal prison in Marion, Ill.
The suit charges that the federal Bureau of Prisons violated
Benkahla's right to due process by pulling him out of the Northeast
Ohio Correctional Center with no transfer paperwork, no hearing and
no opportunity to contest his transfer beforehand. It also questions
the legality of the units.
Similar suits are being prepared by the Center for Constitutional
Rights in New York and by attorneys of other inmates, calling the
specialized units an unwarranted expansion of the war on terrorism.
Inmates in the units get one 15-minute phone call a week and two
two-hour visits a month. They have access to computers, a library, a
basketball court and a religious library. Though the rules are more
restrictive than those of most federal prisons, they are not as
strict as the
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror-prison4-2009jun04%2C0%2C215259.story>supermax
facility in Florence, Colo., which houses terrorists such as
unabomber Theodore Kaczynski.
The Bureau of Prisons said the list of inmates in the units was not a
matter of public record. It said it needed to monitor communications
involving the prisoners because they posed a public-security risk.
"The Communications Management Unit (CMU) was established to house
inmates who, due to their current offense of conviction, offense
conduct, or other verified information, require increased monitoring
of communications between the inmate and persons in the community in
order to protect the safety, security and orderly operation of Bureau
facilities, and to protect the public," the bureau said in written
response to questions from The Times.
But civil rights attorneys contend that the communications
restrictions serve another purpose.
"These are political prisons," says Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney
at the Center for Constitutional Rights. "These people are being
targeted to limit their ability to communicate with the outside
world, and to limit their ability to be political people."
David Shapiro, an attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project
working on Benkahla's case, said, "The fact that somebody like Sabri
is in the CMU really shows the need for better procedures before
people are thrown in there and kept in there indefinitely."
Among the inmates at Marion is environmental activist Daniel McGowan,
who was convicted in 2007 of burning a lumber company office in
Oregon and facilities at an Oregon tree farm that marketed hybrid
trees. Federal Judge Ann Aiken added a "terrorism enhancement" to his
sentence for the political nature of his acts, resulting in a seven-year term.
In May 2008, McGowan was returning to his cell from lunch at
Sandstone, a minimum-security prison in Minnesota, when guards told
him to pack.
"My knees kind of buckled when I heard the term 'CMU,' " McGowan said
in an interview with The Times. "I was on this bus, and I realized,
'Oh, my God. This is pretty much what my lawyer had said.' She said
[to the judge], 'If you give him the terrorism enhancement, the BOP
will treat him differently.' "
McGowan thinks he was put in the unit because he remained in contact
with other activists and published a blog.
Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense
Center and lead attorney in McGowan's case, notes that none of
McGowan's co-defendants ended up in the CMU.
"What's different about Daniel?" she said. "The only difference is
the outreach that he was doing and the voice that he had behind bars."
Benkahla was studying in Medina, Saudi Arabia, in 2003 when Saudi
agents picked him up and shipped him back to the United States to
face trial in Virginia on charges of providing material support to
the Taliban. He was acquitted in 2004.
Federal prosecutors soon called him back before a grand jury, where
he lied under oath about e-mail and phone contact with suspected
jihadists during travels to Pakistan and possibly Afghanistan. Among
the evidence federal prosecutors had were e-mails in which Benkahla
talked of "studying in Afghan," and traveling to a place "far, far
away" that was "top secret." Because the grand jury was part of a
terrorism investigation, his recommended three-year sentence was
extended to 10 years.
The ACLU lawsuit asks that Benkahla be transferred out of the CMU and
that the units be shut down pending full approval under the process
required by the federal Administrative Procedures Act. The lawsuit
maintains that the Bureau of Prisons violated the provisions of the
act by failing to issue a public notice or solicit comments when it
set up the units.
The bureau contends that existing federal regulations allow it to set
the conditions of prisoners' confinement.
<mailto:dean.kuipers at latimes.com>dean.kuipers at latimes.com
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