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<h1><b>Former Chicago cop accused of lying about
torture</b></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-policetorture,0,3257484.story" eudora="autourl">
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-policetorture,0,3257484.story</a>
By MIKE ROBINSON | AP Legal Affairs Writer
<dl>
<dd>9:38 AM CDT, October 21, 2008 <br><br>
</dl>CHICAGO - A former high-ranking Chicago police official was arrested
Tuesday on charges of lying when he said he and homicide detectives under
his command didn't torture one or more murder suspects more than two
decades ago, the U.S. Attorney's office announced. <br><br>
A federal indictment charges that Jon Burge, 60, lied when he said he and
other detectives hadn't participated in the "bagging" of a
suspect -- covering his head with a typewriter cover until he couldn't
breathe -- in January 1987. <br><br>
Burge, fired by the police department in the early 1990s, has long been
the focus of allegations by civil rights attorneys that he and his
detectives used beatings, electric shocks and death threats against
homicide suspects to obtain confessions decades ago. <br><br>
The arrest capped a long-running controversy over allegations that
torture was used against suspects at Burge's Area 2 violent crimes
headquarters. <br><br>
"There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station,"
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a statement issued after the
arrest. "There is no place for perjury and false statements in
federal lawsuits. No person is above the law and no person -- even a
suspected murderer -- is beneath its protection." <br><br>
Burge was arrested before dawn at his home in Apollo Beach, Fla., after
federal prosecutors in Chicago obtained a sealed indictment charging him
with perjury and obstruction of justice statements he made when answering
questions about allegations of police torture in a civil lawsuit.
<br><br>
According to the indictment, Burge was asked whether he had been involved
in the torture of homicide suspect Madison Hobley and said: "I have
not observed nor do I have knowledge of any other examples of physical
abuse and/or torture on the part of Chicago police officers at Area
2." <br><br>
He repeatedly answered similar questions with flat denials. <br><br>
Hobley claims he was tortured into confessing. <br><br>
Burge was tentatively scheduled to be arraigned in Chicago Nov. 27.
<br><br>
A report by two special prosecutors appointed by the Cook County Circuit
Court concluded two years ago that Chicago police beat, kicked, shocked
or otherwise tortured scores of black suspects in the 1970s and 1980s as
they tried to force confessions. But they said the actions were too old
to warrant indictments. <br><br>
The city has more recently agreed to pay $20 million to settle lawsuits
by Hobley and other former inmates who were convicted on evidence
gathered by Burge and detectives under him and later spent years in
prison. <br><br>
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