Friday, April 17, 2009

Stateside Secretive Prisons for Mostly Muslims (Questionably Guilty, too)



Damn, I wish this didn't make me feel so gross. Let me quote from the

post on DemocracyNow.org that the included screencap comes

from:While President Obama has pledged to close

Guantanamo and the secret overseas CIA prisons, calls are increasing

for him to reexamine the treatment of prisoners detained as part of

the so-called war on terror being held inside the United States.



With little public scrutiny, the Bush administration opened two

secretive prisons in Indiana and Illinois, known as Communication

Management Units, or CMUs, that are designed to severely restrict

prisoner communication with family members, the media and the outside

world. Dozens of Muslim men are still being held at the CMUs, as well

as other prisoners, including environmental and animal rights

activists.




Man, do we really think America is so weak that it can be threatened

by folks fighting Global Warming and trying to free monkeys from labs?

No wonder we think Al Qaeda are so bad-ass and killing a bunch of

Somali pirates is something to be proud of (come on, they're

pirates... from Somalia).



Here's a bit more from the DN transcript:Prisoners

held inside the special unit include Dr. Rafil Dhafir, the Iraqi-born

doctor from upstate New York who is serving a twenty-two-year sentence

for violating the Iraqi sanctions by sending aid to Iraq through his

charity Help the Needy; Yassin Aref, the Kurdish-born imam from

Albany, New York, who was convicted in a controversial FBI sting

operation; and also the environmental activist Daniel McGowan. He's

serving a seven-year sentence for his role in two acts of arson.



Some critics have suggested McGowan and other non-Muslim prisoners are

being held in the CMU, because the federal government wants to avoid

accusations that the CMUs are designed to only hold Muslim

men.




And from a bit further on lawyer for one of the prisoners of a CMU

prison, Kathy Manley says:Well, yeah, it's

unconstitutional to treat people more restrictively in a prison

context because of their race or religion. And they're clearly doing

that. I mean, the CMU in Terre Haute is almost 90 percent

Muslim.




I've said it before, I'll say it again: New boss (almost the) same as

the old boss.



Orignal From: Stateside Secretive Prisons for Mostly Muslims (Questionably Guilty, too)

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