BEFORE EVERY PHONE CALL that Fatuma Hashi has with her brother Mahdi, FBI agents come on the line to tell her what she is not permitted to talk about. “You’re not allowed to speak about political issues. Or whatever’s happening in the outside world. Or his case,” she told The Intercept.
Mahdi Hashi, a young man of Somali origin who grew up in London, had never been to the United States before he was imprisoned in the 10-South wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan in November 2012, when he was 23. For over three years, he has been confined to a small cell 23 hours a day without natural light, with an hour alone in a slightly larger indoor cage. He has had no physical contact with anyone. Apart from occasional visits by his lawyer, his human interaction has been limited to brief, transactional exchanges with guards and a monthly 30-minute phone call with his family.
Yet most of Hashi’s time in solitary confinement occurred before he had been deemed guilty by the justice system. Prolonged isolation prior to or in the absence of trial, sensory deprivation, and a lack of independent monitoring are normally associated with the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and CIA black sites overseas. But the MCC’s 10-South wing, which houses terrorism suspects, is no different in these respects. A former MCC prisoner and a psychologist specializing in trauma told The Intercept that the kind of extreme isolation imposed on defendants there can pressure them to accept a guilty plea, irrespective of actual guilt.
For Hashi, who worked at a community youth organization in London, everything changed when he was approached by MI5, the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency. He was pressured to become an informant, according to accounts he gave to rights groups and local authorities, but refused, despite being warned that doing so would make his life difficult.
Madhi Hashi
Photo: Facebook
In 2012, while Hashi was visiting Somalia, the British government used special powers to strip him of his citizenship, leaving him stateless. He crossed into neighboring Djibouti to visit the British consulate there, he claims, and appeal the decision. U.S. prosecutors allege he was traveling to Yemen to join al Qaeda.
Upon entering Djibouti, Hashi was arrested by agents of the secret police and forced to watch other prisoners gagged, blindfolded, and beaten for hours, he alleges in case filings, with the complicity of FBI agents and other unidentified Americans. According to defense attorneys, Hashi was threatened with physical abuse and rape if he did not cooperate.
In November 2012, he was transported to New York by the U.S. government to face charges of supporting al Shabaab, the Somali terrorist organization. Prosecutors say he traveled to Somalia to attend a training camp and fight with al Shabaab in Somalia’s civil war. They accept that Hashi poses no specific threat to any Americans and that he received “harsh treatment” in Djibouti.
In May 2015, after two-and-a-half years of isolation, Hashi entered a guilty plea of conspiring to provide material support to al Shabaab. Last week, on January 29, he was sentenced to nine years in prison. He will likely be incarcerated at a Supermax facility in Colorado or a high-security “communications management unit” in Illinois or Indiana, all of which mean ongoing solitary confinement.
Government prosecutors were seeking 15 years, but Judge John Gleeson of the Eastern District of New York said the case was “complicated,” and accepted, in part, Hashi’s position that he joined al Shabaab not to engage in violent attacks but because he thought the group could restore peace to war-torn Somalia. “I believe you believe this organization you joined was dramatically different than what you thought or hoped it would be,” Judge Gleeson said.
For Fatuma Hashi, the U.S. government’s approach is hard to understand. “He was in his own country,” she said. “It had nothing to do with the United States. Why does this country that has nothing to do with us have a say in his life?”
Fatuma cannot fully share with journalists what she knows about her brother’s treatment in the MCC, a gray slab of a building that goes largely unnoticed by the office workers and tourists walking the streets near the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn bridge. Government restrictions — known as “special administrative measures,” or SAMs — prevent prisoners, their attorneys, and family members from describing the conditions inside the high-security unit to the wider public, shrouding New York’s little Guantánamo in secrecy.
Psychological damage
In an account to be published in a new book on solitary confinement — titled Hell Is a Very Small Place — a Pakistani prisoner, Uzair Paracha, gives one of the most detailed illustrations yet of incarceration at the MCC. He was held in isolation there for two-and-a-half years after he was arrested in 2003 at age 23.
“The windows were huge but the glass was frosted so we had a lot of light but couldn’t see a thing,” he said. “It was a shade of white during the day, blue in the evening and early morning, black at night, and yellow when it snowed, as the snow reflected the streetlights. This was one way to estimate the time since they didn’t allow any watches.”
Video cameras constantly monitored the inside of Paracha’s cell, including the shower and toilet areas. Lighting was completely controlled from the outside, so that guards could deliberately leave the lights on at night to make sleeping harder. With their metallic walls, the cells were like ovens in the summer and freezing in the winter.
The medical effects of Paracha’s imprisonment at the MCC were severe: a weakening of his eyesight, brought about by having his entire world just a few feet away; a deterioration of physical coordination that made walking on stairs harder; and breathing problems, especially while trying to sleep.
Dr. Kate Porterfield is a clinical psychologist at the Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture. She has evaluated prisoners held at various sites in America’s war on terror, including at Guantánamo. “With isolation, there’s a severing of the orienting data of our lives — the stuff that makes us feel like we are on our feet,” she told The Intercept. “This can result in paranoia, disorientation, feeling confused about whether your perceptions match reality, and not being sure who to trust.”
“That’s very dangerous to someone’s psyche,” she added. “It’s not just about feeling depressed because you’re in prison. The defendant ought to be oriented enough in the realities of their life and world that they can contribute to their own defense. A sense of paranoia and suspicion hampers the defendant in trying to connect with his or her legal team so that they can discuss and investigate the case.”
If a person has experienced torture or coercive interrogation before being put in isolation, they are even more vulnerable, Dr. Porterfield said. “There is then a greater likelihood of psychological damage and even less chance for recovery in any real sense.”
Indeed, virtually every academic study has concluded that solitary confinement has serious mental health consequences. These begin after 60 days and resemble the acute reactions suffered by torture and trauma victims.
The average length of time that defendants in federal terrorism prosecutions spend in solitary confinement prior to trial is 22 months, according to a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch and the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute. Amnesty International has stated that pre-trial solitary confinement at the MCC amounts to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”
At least one prisoner who has been held at both the MCC and Guantánamo has described the Manhattan jail as harsher. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who was convicted of involvement in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, told his psychiatrist that Guantánamo is “more pleasant” and “more relaxed” than the isolation section at the MCC. At Guantánamo, he said, prisoners were not strip-searched and could associate together for recreational activities.
Joshua Dratel, an attorney who has represented clients at Guantánamo as well as the MCC, has also said the New York jail is worse.
A tool for prosecutors
The one advantage that prisoners at the MCC are supposed to have over their counterparts in Guantánamo is that they are subject to trial in a criminal court rather than a military tribunal. However, the use of pre-trial solitary confinement has become, in effect if not intent, a tool for prosecutors to skew the judicial process in their favor.
Experts like Dr. Porterfield emphasize how extreme isolation can induce a desire to accept a plea. “We find again and again that isolation in prisons and the experience of maltreatment have a huge impact to the point where people do almost anything to get out of the coercive situation,” she said. “If there’s one thing the last 14 years have shown us, it’s that abuse does not lead to good information gathering.”
Laura Whitehorn was held for two months in pre-trial isolation at the MCC in 1986 on allegations of passport fraud, part of a larger conspiracy case for which she was later sentenced to 23 years in prison. “The sense of isolation, even after only two months, was so intense,” she told The Intercept. “I think, at that point, one would be ready to do almost anything to be back in human contact.”
“What was particularly horrible was the constant watching and monitoring,” Whitehorn recalled. “It was like being played with by the guards, a form of psychological taunting. I felt at any moment I could have any part of my being or body violated with impunity.”
Peter Quijano has represented several clients facing federal terrorism charges at the MCC, most of whom have been held in the jail’s isolation unit.
“It just seems obvious that if anyone, regardless of the mental state they have going in, is housed and detained in such a manner for any period of time, it has to start having an effect on them,” he said. “Anecdotally, we’ve seen increased deterioration over a period of time, especially in a pre-trial situation. It seems like a punishment and it affects their ability to assist in their defense.”
Legal visits at the MCC are hampered by the extreme temperatures in the “claustrophobic” visiting room. “It’s hard to stay there for much more than two hours,” Quijano said. Attorney and client remain in separate cages during the visits, divided by a mesh grate that makes eye contact impossible.
Severe restrictions on communication
Mahdi Hashi divides his monthly phone call between his parents and siblings in London and his wife in Somalia. His sister Fatuma described being “overwhelmed with emotions” on these calls after not hearing his voice for so long. “Every day I’m in pain thinking about his situation,” she said. Fatuma, who is 24, has not seen Mahdi for six years.
She says the family has sent him books that took eight months to arrive. He never receives the letters and photographs they send. But there are strict limits on what Fatuma can say publicly about his imprisonment due to the SAMs applied in his case, which prevent Mahdi Hashi from any “oral, written, or recorded communications” with another prisoner; restrict his monthly phone calls to immediate family members; and prevent his family from sharing the content of the calls with anyone else.
Nor is Hashi allowed to communicate with journalists in any way, including via his attorney. SAMs, which are issued by the attorney general, are supposed to be specific to individual prisoners who pose “a substantial risk” of communicating messages that “could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons.”
One consequence of the SAMs is that protests by prisoners remain hidden from public view. In September 2013, a blogger claimed that Hashi was on hunger strike to protest the conditions of his imprisonment. He was reportedly hospitalized with jaundice and close to liver failure. But the protest could not be verified or discussed in more detail.
“It’s a last resort when you have so few resources to defend yourself,” said Whitehorn, the former MCC prisoner, on reports of Hashi’s hunger strike.
It has not been established whether Hashi was forced to undergo the brutal force-feeding practices used at Guantánamo, although force-feeding was applied in response to the protest of another MCC prisoner. Oussama Kassir, a Swede who went on hunger strike at the MCC eight years ago, was subjected to “medical feeding,” according to his attorney.
The people best placed to shed light on Hashi’s hunger strike — his lawyers and his family — were restricted by the SAMs, and prosecutors and prison administrators declined to comment. According to the blogger, the FBI cut off a phone call from Hashi to his father — in which Hashi described the protest — after one minute, but the SAMs mean we cannot know if this actually happened.
Saghir Hussain, Hashi’s British lawyer, has spoken with his client about the conditions of his incarceration, but is prevented from sharing such information. Hashi’s American lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Mahdi Hashi’s prosecution provides one model of how the U.S. government deals with Western citizens accused of fighting with jihadi organizations overseas: coercive interrogation outside of U.S. jurisdiction, transportation to the isolation unit of a federal jail in New York, solitary confinement and restricted communication in conditions of secrecy until a guilty plea is made, then a lengthy incarceration at a high-security prison.
From one perspective, this approach seems to respect the rule of law. But look a little closer and it becomes clear that there are possibilities for abuse equivalent to or worse than at Guantánamo.
Top photo: Razor wire hangs on a railing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, June 9, 2009, in New York City.
The “SAMs” that forbid description of the jail are astonishingly un-American. Truly, the country gets harder to recognize as America every day.
What hypocrites. The US government has created, trained, armed and funded every single jihadist group. Of course, they’re exploiting their monstrous creations to torture innocent people like the sadistic psychopaths American officials are.
The people in spookoid organizations like the FBI and MI5 think in terms of the end justifying the means and if you are not with us you are with the terrorists.
These spooks need more spies in the Muslim community and cannot easily get as many as they need, perhaps they threaten those who won’t cooperate with the wrecking of their lives by framing them as terrorists. If they do so they would need to carry out the threat on some to encourage the others.
If this is the explanation of the affair Madhi Hashi, it is no surprise that the PTB have gagged him with SAMs. But what happens in nine years when Hashi is freed, how will they keep him quiet then, I suspect that he will not live long enough to be released.
I suppose in the case of a senior mafia boss who would otherwise run his criminal network from a prison cell SAMs make sense, but I suspect in the case of these terrorists who if they are in fact terrorists are small fry who don’t have networks of followers whom they can set to making car bombs, the whole point is to prevent their side of the story being heard.
SAMs are a human rights atrocity as they leave prisoners with no recourse if they are mistreated.
I draw Aran Kundnani’s attention to the affair Aafia Siddiqui. I suspect Aafia is also under SAMs as since her imprisonment we have heard not a peep from her about her side of the story. There is enough information in the public domain to make it certain that she was kidnapped by the Pakistani ISI and handed over to the Americans who tortured her for five years and when finished with her dumped her on a Ghazni street with some childishly constructed information on terrorism in her luggage and tried to provoke the Ghazni police into shooting her dead as a probable suicide bomber. Unfortunately the police in Ghazni did not take the hint and the chance of a neat tying up of loose ends was lost, the shooting but the failure to kill Siddiqui led to the messy trial and and 86 year sentence as an alternate means of shutting her up.
This is incredibly sad and infuriating. In other words, there are prisons, little more than concentration camps, strewn across America — some are even smack-dab in the center of the most populated cities!
This is pretty terrifying. The same thing is happening in Europe. I can’t speak for all EU nations, but Germany and France have had “secret prison camps” for several years now. It’s not really a big secret, except that citizens rarely talk about them… only Hell knows what attrocities go on in there…
I doubt they hold a candle to the brutality and cruelty of American prisons.
In America, these types of police state tactics are spiraling out of control and I thank you for this report. More exposes are desperately needed as this domestic dirty war continues to escalate.
Until there is a real disincentive or penalty for violating the “supreme law of the land” [Article VI of the U.S. Constitution] and government servants being disloyal to their oath of office – nothing will change.
The ACLU should challenge the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the “Supremacy Clause” – it actually states the “U.S. Constitution” is superior. This interpretation would outlaw unconstitutional activity by the executive and legislative branches of government – including federal agencies like the FBI.
Yet another example of our bipartisan descent into fascism and lawless totalitarianism. Yet another reason I vote Green Party (and for Bernie!).
Me too! This country desperately needs empathy and humanity.
The US government and its intelligence agencies have done some mighty horrific things in the past. It’s no surprise whatsoever that it’s getting worse. I just don’t see what us “little people” can do about it, besides sharing well-written & researched pieces like this.
“From one perspective, this approach seems to respect the rule of law.”
Are you kidding?? Rule of law my ass. This country doesn’t have the rule of law. It’s a farce.
Those of us who read outside the mainstream press have known about SAMs and CMUs for years. They are deliberately brutal, specifically designed to cause psychological harm. We long ago crossed over into Kafkaesque territory in this country. And I don’t see it getting any better.
Just wanted to say that this is a well written, well researched article. It is also profoundly disturbing as other comments show. That it accomplishes this by an honest but non-sensational clarity makes it all the more effective. Kudos to The Intercept for recruiting some very good investigative journalists.
The real test of the robustness of someone’s belief that Habeus Corpus is quaint,idiotic and should be ignored, is to tell them that a family member has been detained for “some reason” for the rest of their life. Or that they’ve been accused of assaulting a patient, so they are guilty. Strangely, no one I talk to that believes the prosecution of this “War on Terror” is unfolding as it should thinks it would be OK to apply these same principles to someone they care about.
Maybe it’s not so strange. Doublethink is more common than cognitive dissonance.
The floggin’s will continue until morale improves. I see no sign of “morale” ever improving, at least in my lifetime. I see no way for the average Joe to stop this kind of abuse of power. If anything it will only get worse as time progresses. At least we were informed,(by Snowden), and can act accordingly but other than that, I have no idea.
Great, there should be more of these “black” locations.
As described here, the only crimes that were committed consist of the clear abuse of authority by persons unfit to wield the powers they now exercise .
What can be done to correct these abuses and prevent them from continuing to occur?
Are any US legislators aware of and actively opposing these a blatantly unconstitutional acts?
What non-governmental entities have committed human and economic resources to dealing with this trend in the courts?
Why is this occurring? Does power always corrupt those that are granted who obtain it? As described here, accountability has been intentionally designed out of the process, which is inherently counter-productive yet can not be ventilated in any open court that exists – except that of public attention.
The acts described here have little to do with combating terrorism and everything to do with CREATING terrorists! (Perhaps that’s intentional. If so, who benefits? Only those totalitarian mercenaries -in both in public and private sectors- who have invested in participating in the Mass Surveillance and Militarized State and are banking on further conflagration).
It’s consistent with what drove Ed Snowden to entrust alerting the public to Glenn Greenwald and Laura Potras and Dwight Eisenhower to warn the nation. The fact that these abuses are occurring can not be ignored. Something is very wrong and must be dealt with, constructively.
Anybody who is involved with the national ‘security’ apparatus, and there must be quite a number given the volume of surveillance operations, is nothing more or less than a voyeuristic thug. Are you in it for the money? Or some delusional notion of patriotism? No, any way you slice it, you are sociopathic, insecure and very dangerous, not only to others but yourself.
If this story is true, it just reinforces my assertion that the US government is capable of and has probably committed offenses so evil and heinous, it would snap the mind. My hat is off to conspiracy theorists. I suspect many so-called conspiracies are even darker than the theorists theorize.
Every one of us who frequents this sight is on some government list. You can be sure of it.
Congratulations! You’ve just been awarded the ‘dumbshit comment of the thread award’ for….erm….being a dumbshit. So what should we do swaffy? Stop making comments? Stop visiting this website–or…maybe we’ll end up like Mahdi Hashi? What a fucking loser you are. Dear readers: please have more balls than lil’ swaffy: dare to read The Intercept articles! Dare to bravely make posts! Etc.
This is probably just the beginning… By the time most of us are aware of the war that is being waged against us, it just may be too late. We (all of us who are not in law enforcement or the military) are all Palestinians now….
“special administrative measures” …USG euphemism for “we’ll do anything we goddamned please whether you like it or not”.
Not so far in the distant past, I remember living in a country where, for 12 years, I pledged allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. right. Little did I know, by the time I turned 70, it would become a nation ruled by psychopaths, who embrace world wide kidnapping and torture, imperial continuous war, kill list Tuesdays, murder, permanent detainment without due process, the surveillance and police state, private prisons and a host of other insidious barbaric abominations worthy of praise from the High Prosecutors of the Inquisition. Truly, I can now say without the slightest doubt.. that country is dead. It has now become the United States of Depravity. And I spit in it’s face.
every American should be ashamed how far this country has turned into a police state. This treatment is as bad as slavery, the scope of the problem is not as wide spread but as every bit a inhumane and uncivilised.
I cannot fathom how chickenshit law enforcement is that they feel like this type of treatment should be allowed and there is a special place in hell for the judges that don’t shut the whole system down.
All the officials involved so cowardly and fearful of terrorism? Do they think this horrible treatment will change anything. How can the US kidnap a foreign citizen in their own country and prosecute them for breaking US law even though they have never been to the US.
Does this mean other country are now allowed to kidnap American citizen from the US and bring them home and charge them with crimes?
“every American should be ashamed how far this country has turned into a police state.”
For the disfavored class(es) of the day, and for any who dare protest too much, America has always been a police state.
“This treatment is as bad as slavery, the scope of the problem is not as wide spread but as every bit a inhumane and uncivilised.”
In 1860, at the beginning of the Civil War, there were about 3.5 million slaves in the US.
In 2013, there were approximately 2,25 million prisoners in various prisons and jails in the US, under varying conditions of maltreatment and brutality, in many cases much worse than that of the average slave. Additionally, 4.75 million people were on probation or parole, living under conditions of supervision that are not so very different from that of slaves in many circumstances in the 19th century, and under threat of punishment every bit as dire as “the whip” was for enslaved blacks in earlier days.
As a percentage of the population, of course, the “problem” isn’t as widespread. But, just to keep reality in view . . .
They are, these torturer’s, obviously, as brutal as any of the monsters who work, or worked, for dictators of all brands in the past and in the present. It is very obvious that there is a strikingly large percentage of the population that sees torture as a wonderful tool to extract faulty information from anyone being put to the screw in our ghoulish legal system!! Sicko’s all!
The U.S. Federal government is populated by a gang of criminals. Thanks to Arun Kundnani for bringing this example to light. Eventually the nation and the world must be rid of the thugs who have perpetrated these travesties of justice.
There is a constitutional provision against “cruel and unusual punishment.” In regular prisons this is interpreted to mean banning mandatory work, forced bathing, haircuts and shaving, deprivation of sunlight and outdoor exercise, etc.
Yet here we had no trial (until the Stalinesque “confession” after several years) and no adjudication of guilt by a fair trial. Instead we had third world cage confinement and total isolation. Psychological torture by any fair standards.
Federal and state prisoners can’t legally be treated this way unless their prior acts justify this as a prevention of danger to others in prisons. Clearly this isn’t the case here.
“Terrorism” is just another way of saying the US Constitution is now obsolete and inoperative. Once invoked, whatever legal rights you thought you had are now vanished. And if you are nabbed in some remote foreign locale that the US is meddling in, and the US doesn’t want you there, you are then deemed by some bureaucrat a “terrorist” and can be renditioned back to the NYC cage until you “confess.” Then on to a new cage for 20 years.
Joe Stalin would doubtless approve.
a still growing millions of people are waking up to what the purpose of the Wall Street Elite’s false flag 9-11 treason
There’s one in Chicago too, though the scope of it’s focus seems limited to the citizens of Chicago:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site
I wonder what we are fighting for. I guess Wall Street one per centers, by any and all means, without truth or justice, but which has become the American Way. The horror of it, to have everything good turned upon its head, with nothing but raw power exercised by gigantic government, mere individuals helpless and hopeless, incessantly lied to.
Disgusting. America continues with its extremely poor human rights record.
However, I’ve come to expect no less from the American government. Secret facilities, secret courts, gag orders, torture. And no basis for any of it.
The so-called “Land of the Free”? I’m glad that I don’t live there. Complete joke of a country.
“I’m glad that I don’t live there.”
That’s kind of the point, it doesn’t matter where one lives, the USG is increasingly reserving to itself the power to arrest anyone, anywhere, and bring them to US soil to be processed. You’re safer from the USG as a Chinese peasant than as a citizen of any ‘free, liberal democracy’, and one should certainly never set foot anywhere contentious on the global battlefield (which is difficult). Throw in some brown skin/being a muslim, and you’re at even greater risk.
It appears the government believes the US has a shortage of terrorists and must go to Somalia, capture some and import them to New York. A lot of people will feel there is no reason that Americans can’t fill that role, and I think they have a point. Importing foreign terrorists undermines America’s self reliance. The security state is big business, so the US should invest in training a local labor force rather than relying on Somali imports.
The plan, it seems, is once they have enough terrorists, to arrange for a jail break similar to this recent one in Yemen. It’s a good plan, but the FBI has been making progress in training local terrorists and should have been given more time in my opinion. There have been articles at The Intercept, mocking the FBI’s efforts, and this may have weighed on the decision.
The next time an American soldier gets dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, known locally as Xamar, the largest and capital city of Somalia, the USA will have absolutely no grounds to register a complaint. Somalia uses low-tech evil, the USA uses high-tech evil.
And when the US president goes to China to discuss ‘human rights’ don’t be surprised if they are heard to be laughing. The US of A has burned all it’s credibility.
You also have to wonder just who is running the country – the president and ‘commander-in-chief’ or the uniformed thugs in the Pentagon, or the rudderless CIA who hire ‘contractors’ to do their dirty work. The FBI is reduced to manufacturing evidence and being logistical resource when it comes to matters involving terrorism.
After 2001 the USA was in a position where it had the support of most of the world but the Bush government squandered the goodwill when it set about acting little better than a Mafia hit squad.
The problem is the exceptional has become the norm, and governments, including the UK and USA, no longer recognise just how much things have changed in the minds of government. CLAPPER, that senile 74-year-old who said on TV “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no” when talking about his bare-faced lieing to the US Congress and being given the opportunity to retract his lies, he chose not to. I guess CLAPPER thinks pregnancy, like lieing, has more than two states. And he is still on the US government payroll, still happily tapping communications.
So next time I hear of a US military person being killed or children being murdered in their schools or a high-rise building being demolished, don’t expect me to feel more sorry than the US feels about the children it has killed around the world.
The US has dropped nuclear weapons, invaded countries illegally but there is one thing it hasn’t done yet, as official policy, it hasn’t castrated POWs – the thing Britain did to Kenyan POWs.
I found a reference about the Kenyan atrocities at https://www.leighday.co.uk/International-and-group-claims/Kenya/The-Mau-Mau-claims/The-Mau-Mau-claimants . Wikipedia lists it under “Mau Mau Uprising”.
When I recall the Mau Mau Uprising, it comes to mind that things haven’t changed much regarding the media presentation of it all. I remember watching it on the news reels shown at a small town theatre. What especially sticks with me is the memory of a movie that depicted the Mau Mau as ruthless, bloodthirsty savages. It wasn’t about a native population wanting their lands back, it was about whites being abused and killed in the most terrifying manners. And it had the intended effect, at least on me.
Mohammad was the Hitler of his day, the Koran being his Mein Kampf, and modern regressive Arabs are akin to neo-Nazis. Donald Trump is our modern day Winston Churchill, loudly applying common sense as a curative to masochistic pacifism that ignores murder and rape culture now being imported into Europe. Anti-Semitism is again exploding in Europe, as nuclear bombs are potentially involved in the next act of jihad. God emperor Trumpolean will conquer Arabia to keep the oil and allow America to build infrastructure back up, including moving world’s tallest architecture projects stateside instead of in Arabia where they still mutilate young girls, destroying their womanhood for the rest of their lives. That’s evil. Pure evil.
I love a good anti-Islam rant as much as anybody, but when shit like this is done by the U.S. it becomes a lot harder than it ought to be. Also, the next plan for a tallest building is supposedly in Japan, and it’s a doozy – a mile high tower complete with Wonkavators. See http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6913340/Worlds-tallest-skyscraper-will-be-a-MILE-HIGH-and-twice-as-tall-as-the-Burj.html
Doesn’t surprise me that a hatemongering fan of genocide worships Churchill… He was a POS, war criminal and hard core racist.. birds of a feather.
Many muslims are also semites. Arabic is a semitic language.
The Intercept is to be applauded for uncovering this story and further exposing detainment and imprisonment abuses of people called terrorists.
It undermines the article, however, that the government’s case against Hashi is not presented. It ends up suggesting that our concern for his treatment would be withdrawn if we knew what he was guilty of. It wouldn’t. Advocacy of armed attack on civilians or expressing support for a government or arny considered enemy or terrorists does not dissolve the rule of law or human rights. But when reporting of abuses obscures the possible rationale of those doing the abusing, it creates an atmosphere in the writing of “we can’t stand up to scrutiny or bear to hear the other side” to make our point.
Hashi’s photo with the article further makes this point. The problem is the abuse and denial of due process of detainees. Not treating nice or innocent people badly. If he is finally exonerated, or if confessions or plea agreements were only given under duress, worsens the injustice, but is not a necessary implication to make the point that the unjust treatment is unjust.
When The Intercept is dealing with the topic of terrorism and government accusations and charges, make sure to address those directly, and continue to make the point of the article, rather than obscuring the story. That denies the reader the opportunity to make their own judgment and case against those responsible for injustice. Otherwise we start to sound like Cold War sides-taking rather than people who are against both the injustice the government perpetuates and also against any crime or injustice that its victims might or might not perpetuate.
It undermines the article, however, that the government’s case against Hashi is not presented. […] But when reporting of abuses obscures the possible rationale of those doing the abusing, it creates an atmosphere in the writing of “we can’t stand up to scrutiny or bear to hear the other side” to make our point.
You must be unfamiliar with how links in articles work. If you look at the paragraph in the article that starts with,
you will notice, in this sentence (end of paragraph),
the word “accept” is blue. That indicates that if you place your cursor on it and click it will take you to an outside link. In this case, it links to a 15-page document that gives the details of the government’s case – or as much of them as they were willing to release to The Intercept – that you claim are omitted.
It ends up suggesting that our concern for his treatment would be withdrawn if we knew what he was guilty of.
Speak for your self please. I am perfectly capable of wanting justice to be served, without the necessity of mistreating even the most heinous of criminals. There are international, as well as national, laws about how prisoners are to be treated before, during and after trial. That we have slipped so far into the past that we now maintain secret dungeons that inflict horrific punishment in all phases of that process, irrespective of guilt, says something particularly nasty about us as a country. Trying to excuse or ameliorate it by suggesting we might be more amenable to it if only we knew “the government’s case” says something about you, in particular, and anyone else who accepts human rights should be suspended under any circumstances.
One cannot pass over your response without saying “Well done!”
If civics were still a standard course in American high schools, and if I were a civics teacher, I would ask students to write an essay based solely on a close reading of the following documents: the Bill of Rights; Arun Kundnani’s report; the best statement put forward by the FBI in defense of conditions at the MCC––if there is such a document; Will Hall’s reaction; and, finally, your response.
What have these people become? This question is especially relevant to those of us living next door in Canada. –Certainly a haunting article.
The question Stuart, is NOT “what have these people become?” The question is: What has this country next to yours become?
Your country has been arm twisted into being an accomplice to the violation of privacy within the “five eyes”. You Canadians should ponder what awaits you when your “leaders” let the dirt of the United States fully infect yours to the north.
Be very afraid.
Oh, we do ponder it all, believe me, at least those of us paying attention. …As I’m sure is the case in the U.S. too. The problem is that most get their news and commentary from the corporate media, and that is the case the free world over. Further, we here in Canada at least, have an entertainment media largely imported from the U.S. that presents, to a large part, relentless propaganda glorifying the police and the military. Ferguson is not represented, other than perhaps in the context of ‘the odd bad apple’ scenario.
But the bigger picture is our leaders, as you note. …And in Canada, they’ve been busy giving away the store. We recently voted out a hard right, U.S.-centric Conservative government, ….but that will only slow it down a notch or two.
Three examples:
1/ At any point that Canada was seen by U.S. law enforcement as being soft on drugs, they would sabre-rattle, threatening to impede the flow of goods into their country. Perhaps the most visible of these situations was the threat to put Canada on the list of drug nations for lax enforcement of “grows”. Our business community went into lobbying overdrive. It was embarrassing. Much public money was spent on interdiction measures including over $1 billion for smart meters in the province of British Columbia with 4 million population.
2/ Canada now has legislation demanding that hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers hold a Transportation Security Clearance that is essentially granted by the U.S. Protection in labour, human rights and privacy law had to be pulled to accommodate the demands of a TSC. Our Charter cannot apply as a case cannot be brought forward due to it all being secret. Thankfully, it is being very, very “incrementally” initiated. Workers so designated have to submit to a secret investigation of themselves, and their family, friends, and associates, for secret criteria, some of which are known to be any illegal drug use, drug involvement, criminal record, criminal charges past, with the file to be shared with any interest that the U.S. chooses. Those failing are deemed a “security threat” and entered as such in the above noted file. Again, this flew because the U.S. threatened to curb Canada’s access to the U.S. market, the interests of the Canadian public to determine their own freedom and course be damned.
3/ Of special annoyance to the U.S. has been our refusal to enforce the American, million member, no-fly list. While denying aircraft permission to enter and fly over a country’s airspace are reasonably routine, the U.S. is now the first to require that passengers on planes flying into and out of Canada be individually approved by them on the basis of “secret” criteria. Canadian privacy protections had to be repealed to provide for passenger information to be provided to the U.S. A person is simply granted or denied boarding with no further explanation. Be aware that this is not simply for flights bound for U.S. destinations or stopovers. Its for fly-overs. Further, it was pedalled during debate in Committee that due to Canada having it’s cities situated so close to the border, all flights would risk entering U.S. airspace while circling to land, and thus needed to be included in “pre-clearance”, domestic flights exempted. This is quite incorrect and a ruse. There are numerous international airports in Canada that are a long way from the border. Nevertheless all international flights are subject to this new requirement. ….And yet again the business community, in this instance the Canadian airline industry, carried the ball. –And the U.S. finally succeeded in strong-arming Canada’s enforcement of a “secret list” that a U.S. Justice Department audit in 2009 placed at 700,000 and growing by 20,000 per month. –There are obviously a lot more people on this list than only those that pose “a clear and immanent threat” to aircraft. —
We are being served up on a platter to the U.S., and it’s our leaders that are doing it, in part becuase they are totally unprepared to do politics American style.
You guy’s up north need to take care of things up there. What’s going on here is going to ruin the whole goddamned planet the way we’re going. The tentacles suck the blood out of the whole world. This is beyond human. I was in Europe a while ago, and let everyone I spoke with how messed up this place is. It makes me vomit to be here.
These “special administrative measures” need further examination. What kind of “America” can have a law that prohibits a family member from sharing what he knows, what he has heard? Does he have to emigrate to China or Russia so that he can have free speech, publish his dissident books? If he does, is the government going to go after anyone who passes around a copy, or tries to talk about it? If this is true, any and all measures are justified to stop it.
Regarding psycholigcal damage, one of the more interesting recent theories involves trauma and isolation causing changes in gut bacteria makeup which upset the balance of neurochems in the brain. Means that partial recovery {because there’s still the brain “wiring” to deal with} is a possibility.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-truisms-wellness/201512/can-gut-bacteria-control-mental-health
Overall, this country’s abuses are most often used to ensure recidivism in both the criminal justice and its appendages in the GWoT arena. Truly a dispicable *business*.
The secrecy is what scares me more than the conditions. The entire process is far too manipulative.
For what it’s worth, I found some in-depth coverage of the indeed passed 2014 law at http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06820/SN06820.pdf . Remarkably, due to protest by the House of Lords in the closest thing Britain has to constitutional review, to copy language of a preexisting treaty, the bill says any Briton can lose citizenship on the Home Secretary’s say-so, for actions “seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK”, but only if there are “reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such a country or territory.” The definition of “seriously prejudicial” is the subject of gamesmanship – there’s a statement in that PDF but notice it describes what that phrase includes, not what it is limited to.
This seems like heady stuff – a Home Secretary on the outs with Israel might decide one day to strip citizenship from all the country’s Jews (or at least those accused of “prejudicial” associations with Israel) for example. As the file I link covers, there is a sense of second-class citizenship for all those with potential ethnic claims to citizenship. Though presumably those affiliated with other Middle Eastern nations fear it more realistically, I wonder if even ordinary Jews in Britain are thinking twice about whether it makes sense to stay in a country that has already filed most of the bureaucratic paperwork needed to talk itself into deporting them all, or perhaps denying them both citizenship and travel and putting them in camps somewhere.
I should add that the PDF also discusses a related ability to deny British citizens passports when “a person whose past, present or proposed activities, actual or suspected, are believed by the Home Secretary to be so undesirable that the grant or continued enjoyment of passport facilities is contrary to the public interest.” This bears quite direct comparison to the laws of the former Soviet Union, though it may be some time until the powers are exercised as frequently.
This account is badly contradicted by the Nation article it sources. You write “In 2012, while Hashi was visiting Somalia, the British government used special powers to strip him of his citizenship, leaving him stateless.” You say he was visiting Somalia. However, The Nation says that he “decided to move back to Somalia, where he married and had a son”. It also credits Theresa May with a then-pending (February 2014) bill to allow the Home Secretary to strip naturalized Britons of citizenship even if it made them stateless, contrary to international agreements.
Torture has always been a part of the American prison experience. 9/11 brought it out into open.
Land of the free?
US Constitution replaced by the law of the jungle.
Again, it seems like there are people in positions in the West who live on the wrong side of prison bars. This is, like Chelsea Manning’s situation, a prime example.