International news
Hundreds in Israeli jails join hunger strike
Feb 12, 2012 Al Jazeera
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have joined a fellow inmate on a hunger strike, after human rights groups reported the original protester's life was in danger.
Khader Adnan, widely believed to be a leader of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, has been refusing food and water since he was detained on December 17, without trial or charge.
Jamil Khatib, Adnan's lawyer, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that an appeal against his detention will likely be decided by an Israeli military court on Monday.
On Thursday, Adnan appealed his detention without charge before an Israeli military judge sitting in a special session in hospital.
His hunger strike, longer than any Palestinian prisoner before him, according to Palestinian officials, is in protest over what he calls his unjust detention and mistreatment by Israeli authorities.
Human Rights Watch on Saturday called on Israel to "immediately charge or release" him.
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that Israel should "immediately end its unlawful administrative detention" of Khader Adnan and "charge or release him".
Administrative detention
Adnan was arrested from his house in the occupied West Bank on December 17, and given a four-month administrative detention order by an Israeli military court on January 10.
Hundreds of Palestinians, protesting outside Ofer Prison in the West Bank in solidarity with Adnan on Saturday, were dispersed by Israeli soldiers using rubber bullets and tear gas.
An Israeli military spokesman said that protesters had "hurled rocks at security forces".
In addition, two Israelis and two Palestinians were arrested in a separate rally for Adnan in the West Bank village of Beit Omar, the military and activists said.
There are currently some 310 Palestinians in administrative detention, a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial.
"Israel should end, today, before it's too late, its almost two-month-long refusal to inform Adnan of any criminal charge or evidence against him," Whitson said.
Mistreatment allegations
On Friday, Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process, called on Israel "to do everything in its power to preserve the health of the prisoner and resolve this case while abiding by all legal obligations under international law".
Adnan’s wife, Randa, complained that medical staff were treating him badly after she visited him in hospital on February 7, the first time since his detention.
His health is deteriorating, she said, adding that a doctor had "mocked him when he asked for water and said that he should also stop drinking water".
"A lot of the hair on his face and head has fallen off. He has not been allowed to shower or wash during all his time in detention, nor is he allowed to wear warm clothes in this cold weather," Randa said.
Hundreds in Israeli jails join hunger strike
Feb 12, 2012 Al Jazeera
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have joined a fellow inmate on a hunger strike, after human rights groups reported the original protester's life was in danger.
Khader Adnan, widely believed to be a leader of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, has been refusing food and water since he was detained on December 17, without trial or charge.
Jamil Khatib, Adnan's lawyer, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that an appeal against his detention will likely be decided by an Israeli military court on Monday.
On Thursday, Adnan appealed his detention without charge before an Israeli military judge sitting in a special session in hospital.
His hunger strike, longer than any Palestinian prisoner before him, according to Palestinian officials, is in protest over what he calls his unjust detention and mistreatment by Israeli authorities.
Human Rights Watch on Saturday called on Israel to "immediately charge or release" him.
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that Israel should "immediately end its unlawful administrative detention" of Khader Adnan and "charge or release him".
Administrative detention
Adnan was arrested from his house in the occupied West Bank on December 17, and given a four-month administrative detention order by an Israeli military court on January 10.
Hundreds of Palestinians, protesting outside Ofer Prison in the West Bank in solidarity with Adnan on Saturday, were dispersed by Israeli soldiers using rubber bullets and tear gas.
An Israeli military spokesman said that protesters had "hurled rocks at security forces".
In addition, two Israelis and two Palestinians were arrested in a separate rally for Adnan in the West Bank village of Beit Omar, the military and activists said.
There are currently some 310 Palestinians in administrative detention, a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial.
"Israel should end, today, before it's too late, its almost two-month-long refusal to inform Adnan of any criminal charge or evidence against him," Whitson said.
Mistreatment allegations
On Friday, Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process, called on Israel "to do everything in its power to preserve the health of the prisoner and resolve this case while abiding by all legal obligations under international law".
Adnan’s wife, Randa, complained that medical staff were treating him badly after she visited him in hospital on February 7, the first time since his detention.
His health is deteriorating, she said, adding that a doctor had "mocked him when he asked for water and said that he should also stop drinking water".
"A lot of the hair on his face and head has fallen off. He has not been allowed to shower or wash during all his time in detention, nor is he allowed to wear warm clothes in this cold weather," Randa said.
Israeli Appeals Court Decision Delayed in Disregard of Khader Adnan’s Critical Medical Condition
Ramallah, 9 February 2012 – Addameer reiterates its grave concern for the life of Khader Adnan, who received no decision today in the appeal against his administrative detention order. On the 54th day of his hunger strike, Khader’s health has entered an alarmingly critical stage that will likely have irreversible consequences and could lead to his fatal collapse at any moment. He stated that he will remain steadfast in his hunger strike until he is released.
**** ACT NOW! Here is how you can help Khader Adnan:
Write to the Israeli government, military and legal authorities and demand that Khader Adnan be released immediately.
- Brigadier General Dani Afroni
Military Judge Advocate General
6 David Elazar Street
Harkiya, Tel Aviv
Israel
Fax: +972 3 608 0366; +972 3 569 4526
Email: arbel@mail.idf.il; avimn@idf.gov.il - Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi
OC Central Command Nehemia Base, Central Command
Neveh Yaacov, Jerusalam
Fax: +972 2 530 5741 - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak
Ministry of Defense
37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya
Tel Aviv 61909, Israel
Fax: +972 3 691 6940 / 696 2757 - Col. Eli Bar On
Legal Advisor of Judea and Samaria PO Box 5
Beth El 90631
Fax: +972 2 9977326
Write to your own elected representatives urging them to pressure Israel to release Khader Adnan and to put an end to such an unjust, arbitrary and cruel system of incarceration without trial.
Interview: Ex-prisoner reflects on friendship with Khader Adnan and his hunger strike for justice Bekah Wolf The Electronic Intifada 9 February 2012Palestinians in Ramallah rally in solidarity with Khader Adnan and other political prisoners, 7 February 2012.
(Fadi Arouri / Xinhua)Mousa Abu Maria spent nearly five years, from 1999 to 2003, in Israeli prisons. He spent an additional 14 months, from 2008 to 2009, in administrative detention (without charge or trial). He, like current hunger striker Khader Adnan, was subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment and torture as part of his interrogation. In 2001, he shared a cell with Adnan.
Abu Maria, a member of the popular committee in the West Bank village Beit Ommar and co-founder of the Palestine Solidarity Project, spoke to Bekah Wolf about Khader Adnan, who is being held by Israel without charge and has entered his 55th day of hunger strike.
Bekah Wolf: How do you know Khader Adnan?
Mousa Abu Maria: We met in 2001 or 2002 in Askelon prison. He was an organizer in the prison, because it wasn’t the first time he’d been in jail. He used to lead classes about Palestinian history and the uprising. Prison was like a university in those times and he was one of the professors.
BW: What was he like as a person?
MAM: Most [foreign] people think if you have a beard or you’re a member of Islamic Jihad, you just sit and pray all day. Khader would joke around, just like anyone else. He’s my age, we were young, we were like any other young people. He would try to make us feel like we weren’t in prison, like we were in a dorm room. He was always organizing the prisoners, which of course got him in trouble with the guards. He was often put in solitary confinement, but would come out and continue what he was doing before.
BW: He began his hunger strike to protest how he was treated during his interrogation. He was held in stress positions, beaten and insulted. Is that similar to what you experienced?
MAM: This is what the occupation forces do to activists. They try to show how they have control over you. They want to say, maybe you had power [as an organizer] outside, but in here [prison] we have complete control. They would force me to sit with my hands cuffed to my ankles, on a tiny chair that was tilted over so that I was in a crouching position for hours, day after day. It is both very painful and a psychological torture. You can’t lift your head, you can’t look them in the eye. They want you to feel that you do not own yourself, that they own you, and you do not have any power to resist.
BW: What about the beating and insults? What is the purpose?
MAM: Again, it is just to show control, to break your will to resist. They know you have been an activist and that you have internal strength to resist. They have to break that from you. Sometimes it’s to try to get information from you but many times it is just to break your will. That’s why you go on hunger strike. It is the only thing you can control: what you eat, what you put into your body. It is the way to show that you can still resist. You are showing your captors and your comrades, but you are also showing yourself, giving yourself strength that you are still resisting, that they haven’t taken everything away from you.
BW: Khader is now striking to protest being in administrative detention. You were in administrative detention for 14 months. Can you explain what it is and why it is inspiring a man to die rather than live under such conditions?
MAM: First of all, I do not believe Khader wants to die. That is not in his mind. We all went on hunger strikes before, to protest conditions of our imprisonment. He is showing his commitment to resistance in the only way he can right now, with his own body.
Administrative detention is also a psychological attack on a person. You are held, without knowing what you are accused of, but most importantly, without knowing when the imprisonment will end. When you are convicted, you can accept in your mind what is happening, and put it aside, and plan and hope for the day when you are released.
Administrative detention does not allow you to do that. Because you never know when you will be released, you are in constant turmoil. Your family is also in turmoil. You remember when I thought I was going to be released. The guards told me to pack my things, and I sent a message to you through another prisoner that I was being released. They even drove me to the gate of the prison, with all of my things, and I thought, after 12 months, I was being released, I would see my wife and family again.
And then they said it was a joke, and put me back into the jeep and brought me back to the prison. It destroys your soul. Your mind can only experience so much loss of power before you start to destroy yourself. It takes a huge amount of strength not to fall into despair. This is a powerful reason for Khader going on hunger strike. I believe he needs to feel that they [occupation forces] are not in full control of him. They can control when he sees his family, when he will be released, all of that — but he has control over something now, something they cannot take away from him. The goal of any occupation force is to demonstrate their total power over the people, so that they will not resist. Khader is showing himself, and all of us, that the power to resist is always in our hands. Occupation forces cannot take that away from us.
BW: Mousa, you were in jail for more than six years. You were beaten so badly during your interrogation for your first imprisonment that they had to take you to the hospital. You’ve had your house raided in the middle of the night several times, and any time you know they might take you away and put you in administrative detention again, even if you haven’t done anything. How do you continue working with the popular struggle? How do you keep resisting?
MAM: People like me, like Khader, like Bassem Tamimi [imprisoned organizer from Nabi Saleh], we made a commitment a long time ago to resist. We promised ourselves and our people that we would face the occupation and look it in the eye.
Of course, I do not want to go to prison again. I want to have a life with my wife and my daughter. We Palestinians are not robots, we are not living just to resist. We want to have a normal life, to laugh and joke and go to the park with our children. But we also want to keep our commitment to ourselves and our people: we will stand up to the occupation. We will not let them own us. Even if the only way to resist their control is to refuse them, to refuse their food, their water, their medical treatment, then that is what we will do. Khader Adnan is continuing the resistance to the very end. He is actually fighting for life, life with justice and dignity.
Bekah Wolf is a co-founder of the Palestine Solidarity Project, and has worked in the West Bank since 2003. She is married to Mousa Abu Maria.
Palestine - Khader Adnan - Dying to Live, Fighting for Freedom
Khader Adnan - Dying to Live, Fighting for Freedom
February 8, 2011 freeahmadsaadat.org
The situation of Khader Adnan, imprisoned Palestinian activist held without charge or trial under administrative detention, is urgent. Khader Adnan has been on an ongoing hunger strike since December 17, 2011, protesting abuse of his family, torture and inhumane treatment, and the use of administrative detention to imprison Palestinian activists without charge or trial.
Khader Adnan has completed 53 days of hunger strike and is now in a severe medical condition. Bobby Sands, the martyr of the Irish republican prisoners' movement, died after 66 days of hunger strike, demanding justice and human rights from his own colonial captors, much as Khader Adnan did today.
Ahmad Sa'adat, imprisoned Palestinian national leader, joined with Marwan Barghouti from his isolation cell today to urge the immediate release of Khader Adnan. The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat echoes this call and urges activists around the world to raise the call to free Khader Adnan, a symbol of the resistance, resilience, steadfastness and courage of Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian people, who has put his body and his life on the line inside the occupation's jails, to claim his dignity, his rights, and the rights of his people.
TAKE ACTION: Please see the action items below, or write a letter and sign a petition at this widely circulated call: http://samidoun.ca/2012/02/take-action-for-hunger-striking-palestinian-prisoner-khader-adnan/
Picket, protest or call the Israeli embassy or consulate in your location and demand the immediate freedom of Khader Adnan, Ahmad Sa'adat and all Palestinian political prisoners. Make it clear that you are watching the situation of Khader Adnan and that Israel is responsible for his health and life, and demand an end to the use of isolation, solitary confinement, and administrative detention. Send us reports of your protests at Israeli embassies and consulates at campaign@freeahmadsaadat.org.
Write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the prisoners' demands are implemented. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at JER_jerusalem@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Khader Adnan. Make it clear that arbitrary detention without charge or trial is unacceptable, and that the ICRC must act to protect Palestinian prisoners from cruel and inhumane treatment.
Addameer details the experience of Khader Adnan with the Israeli occupation. He is currently held under administrative detention (arbitrary detention without charge or trial, based on secret evidence, and renewable indefinitely for repeated periods of up to six months.) Khader Adnan was issued a four-month administrative detention order on January 8, which was confirmed on February 6. This is the eighth time Adnan has been detained, and he has served a total of six years in Israeli prisons - mostly without charge or trial under the administrative detention scheme.
Addameer reports:
Khader was arrested on 17 December 2011, when Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) raided his home outside Jenin at 3:30 am. Before entering his house, soldiers used the driver that takes Khader’s father to the vegetable market, Mohammad Mustafa, as a human shield by forcing him to knock on the door of the house and call out Khader’s name while blindfolded. A huge force of soldiers then entered the house shouting. Recognizing Khader immediately, they grabbed him violently in front of his two young daughters and ailing mother.
The soldiers blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back using plastic shackles before leading him out of his house and taking him to a military jeep. Khader was then thrown on his back and the soldiers began slapping him in the face and kicking his legs. They kept him lying on his back until they reached Dutan settlement, beating him on the head throughout the 10-minute drive. When they reached the settlement, Khader was pushed aggressively out of the jeep. Because of the blindfold, Khader did not see the wall right in front of him and smashed into it, causing injuries to his face.
Following his arrest, he was taken to interrogation, refused medical care and treatment, subject to physical abuse and mistreatment including being tied to a chair in a stressful position, causing extreme back pain, and pulling on his beard so hard that his hair was ripped out. Khader was subjected to abusive language about his family, and refused to speak any further to interrogators, as well as refusing food. In retaliation, he was placed into isolation and solitary confinement, denied family visits, awakened in the middle of the night and strip-searched. He has refused to end his strike, protesting the illegitimacy of his arbitrary detention by an illegal occupation authority as well as cruel and inhumane treatment and abuse.
This is not his first hunger strike - in 2005 he protested his isolation in Kfar Yuna with a 12-day hunger strike. Addameer has emphasized that the Israeli occupation is responsible for his life.
Prisoners in Corcoran Ad-Seg Continue Hunger Strike: CDCR Lags On Gang Validation Revisions
Press Contact: Isaac Ontiveros Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity
Oakland – Although media coverage of the event has been scarce, prisoners in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) at Corcoran State Prison continue a hunger strike that has lasted over a month. In a statement released in late December, representatives of the strikers listed 11 demands that include access to educational and rehabilitative programming, adequate and timely medical care, and timely hearings on their cases and petitions. As of February 9, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), disclosed that 30 men were still striking and a representative in the office said that prisoners had been intermittently striking for the last month. Unlike the California prisoner hunger strikes of July and September, little attention has been given to the ongoing strike at Corcoran.
Family members and advocates fear strikers may be experiencing serious medical issues and even death. A prisoner at Corcoran, who remains unnamed due to fear of reprisal, stated in a letter received on February 5th, “On or about February 2nd or 3rd, 2012, an inmate has passed away due to not eating that has been going on over here in Corcoran ASU. Inmates are passing out and having other medical problems and it seems that this is not being taken seriously. There will be more casualties if this isn’t addressed or brought to light.”
While this death is unconfirmed, it raises concerns that the CDCR is failing to deal with this hunger strike in an appropriate manner. “The prisoners are making very reasonable and legitimate demands regarding basic human rights,” says Carol Strickman, a lawyer working on behalf of some hunger strikers in California, “For those of us on the outside, the slow pace of reform is frustrating. For those people enduring barbarous conditions, the lack of meaningful improvement is unbearable.”
The demands of the Corcoran strikers are somewhat different than those of the strikes sparked in Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) this past summer and fall, which at one point included 12,000 prisoners in 13 prisons across California. Administrative Segregation Units are often used as holding places for prisoners in route to SHU facilities, or who are waiting release back into general population. Many prisoners in the various ASUs in California have been validated as gang members by CDCR and languish, sometimes for years, awaiting transfer to facilities such as Pelican Bay, where some prisoners have spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement.
Following the September hunger strike and significant pressure from the public and legislators in Sacramento, the CDCR announced that it would make changes to its gang validation procedure and would release a draft for review by stakeholders sometime in January. “The CDCR is clearly behind on their timeline. Meanwhile, prisoners continue to be validated largely due to association and baseless allegations effectively dooming them to indefinite SHU sentences without any means of challenging their cases,” says Azadeh Zohrabi, of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition . The stakeholders’ review will reportedly involve the California Correctional and Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), state legislators and prison advocates.
Lawyers, families, and advocates will continue to monitor the situation at Corcoran. For updates and further information please visit www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com.
Prisoners in Corcoran Ad-Seg Continue Hunger Strike: CDCR Lags On Gang Validation Revisions
Press Contact: Isaac Ontiveros Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity
Oakland – Although media coverage of the event has been scarce, prisoners in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) at Corcoran State Prison continue a hunger strike that has lasted over a month. In a statement released in late December, representatives of the strikers listed 11 demands that include access to educational and rehabilitative programming, adequate and timely medical care, and timely hearings on their cases and petitions. As of February 9, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), disclosed that 30 men were still striking and a representative in the office said that prisoners had been intermittently striking for the last month. Unlike the California prisoner hunger strikes of July and September, little attention has been given to the ongoing strike at Corcoran.
Family members and advocates fear strikers may be experiencing serious medical issues and even death. A prisoner at Corcoran, who remains unnamed due to fear of reprisal, stated in a letter received on February 5th, “On or about February 2nd or 3rd, 2012, an inmate has passed away due to not eating that has been going on over here in Corcoran ASU. Inmates are passing out and having other medical problems and it seems that this is not being taken seriously. There will be more casualties if this isn’t addressed or brought to light.”
While this death is unconfirmed, it raises concerns that the CDCR is failing to deal with this hunger strike in an appropriate manner. “The prisoners are making very reasonable and legitimate demands regarding basic human rights,” says Carol Strickman, a lawyer working on behalf of some hunger strikers in California, “For those of us on the outside, the slow pace of reform is frustrating. For those people enduring barbarous conditions, the lack of meaningful improvement is unbearable.”
The demands of the Corcoran strikers are somewhat different than those of the strikes sparked in Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) this past summer and fall, which at one point included 12,000 prisoners in 13 prisons across California. Administrative Segregation Units are often used as holding places for prisoners in route to SHU facilities, or who are waiting release back into general population. Many prisoners in the various ASUs in California have been validated as gang members by CDCR and languish, sometimes for years, awaiting transfer to facilities such as Pelican Bay, where some prisoners have spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement.
Following the September hunger strike and significant pressure from the public and legislators in Sacramento, the CDCR announced that it would make changes to its gang validation procedure and would release a draft for review by stakeholders sometime in January. “The CDCR is clearly behind on their timeline. Meanwhile, prisoners continue to be validated largely due to association and baseless allegations effectively dooming them to indefinite SHU sentences without any means of challenging their cases,” says Azadeh Zohrabi, of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition . The stakeholders’ review will reportedly involve the California Correctional and Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), state legislators and prison advocates.
Lawyers, families, and advocates will continue to monitor the situation at Corcoran. For updates and further information please visit www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com.
US court hears Dr Aafia Siddiqui's lawyers appeal
Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, was sentenced to 86 years in prison by the Federal District Court in New York City. PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON: More than a year after the infamous neuroscientist Dr Aafia Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years in prison on charges of attacking US soldiers, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard an appeal in New York on Friday.
Speaking to the The Express Tribune, Dawn Cardi, Dr Siddiqui’s lawyer who has filed the appeal, said that they argued nine points. Cardi said that Dr Siddiqui’s statements that were used to impeach her were not voluntarily obtained, and that she should get a new trial.
Cardi said that the terrorism enhancements should have been imposed on the facts because it increased the 20-year sentence that Dr Sidduqui would have gotten to life sentence. Dr Siddiqui’s lawyer also said that they argued in front of the court that because of Dr Siddiqui’s mental health condition, her lawyers should have made the decision about her testifying at court, and not Dr Siddiqui herself.
When asked about the road ahead for the woman whose case grabbed headlines around the world when she was discovered at Bagram in 2008, Cardi said, “We wont know until the court writes its decision. It’ll take 3-4 months, and then there is no other recourse. Unless there is a constitutional issue of significance, you can not make an appeal to the Supreme Court, but its too early to say.”
Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist by profession and a graduate of MIT and currently held at a federal medical centre in Texas, allegedly went missing for five years before she was discovered in Afghanistan. The prosecution says that she tried to fire on a US soldier during her interrogation. She has also been accused of working for al Qaeda. Dr Siddiqui’s family disputes the US version of this account.
After her sentencing in September 2010, Dr Siddiqui also tried to fire her lawyers, and wrote a letter to the court that she did not want her case appealed. Dawn Cardi, Dr Siddiqui’s counsel, said that no one ever filed a notice of appearance for Dr Siddiqui to do her appeal. “As her assigned counsel, it is our obligation to appeal her case.”
US court hears Dr Aafia Siddiqui's lawyers appeal
Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, was sentenced to 86 years in prison by the Federal District Court in New York City. PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON: More than a year after the infamous neuroscientist Dr Aafia Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years in prison on charges of attacking US soldiers, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard an appeal in New York on Friday.
Speaking to the The Express Tribune, Dawn Cardi, Dr Siddiqui’s lawyer who has filed the appeal, said that they argued nine points. Cardi said that Dr Siddiqui’s statements that were used to impeach her were not voluntarily obtained, and that she should get a new trial.
Cardi said that the terrorism enhancements should have been imposed on the facts because it increased the 20-year sentence that Dr Sidduqui would have gotten to life sentence. Dr Siddiqui’s lawyer also said that they argued in front of the court that because of Dr Siddiqui’s mental health condition, her lawyers should have made the decision about her testifying at court, and not Dr Siddiqui herself.
When asked about the road ahead for the woman whose case grabbed headlines around the world when she was discovered at Bagram in 2008, Cardi said, “We wont know until the court writes its decision. It’ll take 3-4 months, and then there is no other recourse. Unless there is a constitutional issue of significance, you can not make an appeal to the Supreme Court, but its too early to say.”
Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist by profession and a graduate of MIT and currently held at a federal medical centre in Texas, allegedly went missing for five years before she was discovered in Afghanistan. The prosecution says that she tried to fire on a US soldier during her interrogation. She has also been accused of working for al Qaeda. Dr Siddiqui’s family disputes the US version of this account.
After her sentencing in September 2010, Dr Siddiqui also tried to fire her lawyers, and wrote a letter to the court that she did not want her case appealed. Dawn Cardi, Dr Siddiqui’s counsel, said that no one ever filed a notice of appearance for Dr Siddiqui to do her appeal. “As her assigned counsel, it is our obligation to appeal her case.”
Peltier's secret FBI docs may reveal operative
Indian activist seeks documents
February 10, 2012 Buffalo News
When Leonard Peltier was arrested in connection with the killing of two FBI agents in South Dakota in 1975, the American Indian activist wasn’t alone.
Canadian police also picked up Frank Blackhorse, but he was never charged in the shootings and, 37 years later, remains a free man.
Decades later, Peltier’s lawyers are trying to find out why as part of a new suit in Buffalo federal court.
“They’re both arrested, and yet Blackhorse is never brought back to the United States,” said Michael Kuzma, a Buffalo lawyer and a member of Peltier’s legal defense team.
Kuzma thinks that Blackhorse — his real name was Frank Deluca—was an FBI operative posing as an Indian activist and that secret FBI documents may confirm that role.
Peltier, 67, an American Indian Movement leader in the 1970s, has maintained his innocence in the murder, and supporters have tried to get his 1977 conviction overturned ever since, claiming he was targeted for his activism.
As part of that effort, they are asking a federal judge in Buffalo to release 927 pages of FBI documents, once kept in Buffalo, from the nearly four-decade- old case. Their Freedom of Information request dates back to 2004 and is the latest in a series of court actions designed to pry loose secret government documents.
Kuzma said the FBI initially agreed to release the documents but later backtracked and decided they might violate Blackhorse’s privacy and therefore are exempt from federal disclosure law.
Even now, the killing of FBI Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams evokes great passion among federal agents across the country.
About 500 active and retired agents held a march outside the White House 11 years ago, asking departing President Bill Clinton not to grant clemency to Peltier.
In 2009, Peltier came up for possible parole, and again, the FBI urged that he be kept in prison. “The inevitable haziness brought on by the passage of time does not diminish the brutality of the crimes or the lifelong torment to the surviving families,” Thomas J. Harrington, an assistant director at the FBI, said in a statement to the parole commission.
Peltier, who is serving his two terms of life in prison at the federal penitentiary in Coleman, Fla., was the focus of several nationwide protests last weekend, including one in Buffalo attended by dozens of supporters.
Peltier's secret FBI docs may reveal operative
Indian activist seeks documents
February 10, 2012 Buffalo News
When Leonard Peltier was arrested in connection with the killing of two FBI agents in South Dakota in 1975, the American Indian activist wasn’t alone.
Canadian police also picked up Frank Blackhorse, but he was never charged in the shootings and, 37 years later, remains a free man.
Decades later, Peltier’s lawyers are trying to find out why as part of a new suit in Buffalo federal court.
“They’re both arrested, and yet Blackhorse is never brought back to the United States,” said Michael Kuzma, a Buffalo lawyer and a member of Peltier’s legal defense team.
Kuzma thinks that Blackhorse — his real name was Frank Deluca—was an FBI operative posing as an Indian activist and that secret FBI documents may confirm that role.
Peltier, 67, an American Indian Movement leader in the 1970s, has maintained his innocence in the murder, and supporters have tried to get his 1977 conviction overturned ever since, claiming he was targeted for his activism.
As part of that effort, they are asking a federal judge in Buffalo to release 927 pages of FBI documents, once kept in Buffalo, from the nearly four-decade- old case. Their Freedom of Information request dates back to 2004 and is the latest in a series of court actions designed to pry loose secret government documents.
Kuzma said the FBI initially agreed to release the documents but later backtracked and decided they might violate Blackhorse’s privacy and therefore are exempt from federal disclosure law.
Even now, the killing of FBI Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams evokes great passion among federal agents across the country.
About 500 active and retired agents held a march outside the White House 11 years ago, asking departing President Bill Clinton not to grant clemency to Peltier.
In 2009, Peltier came up for possible parole, and again, the FBI urged that he be kept in prison. “The inevitable haziness brought on by the passage of time does not diminish the brutality of the crimes or the lifelong torment to the surviving families,” Thomas J. Harrington, an assistant director at the FBI, said in a statement to the parole commission.
Peltier, who is serving his two terms of life in prison at the federal penitentiary in Coleman, Fla., was the focus of several nationwide protests last weekend, including one in Buffalo attended by dozens of supporters.
Police disperses rally for Dr Aafia in Karachi
Policewomen escort Dr Fouzia Siddiqui after her arrest during Pasban protest rally for the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui at Abdullah Haroon road in Karachi on Friday. – Photo by PPI
KARACHI: Police on Friday baton-charged and used water cannons to disperse a protest rally of Pasban that intended to march towards the US Consulate in Karachi to raise the issue of detention of Dr Aafia Siddiqui.
About a dozen protest leaders including sister of the detained Pakistani Dr Fouzia Siddiqui were arrested.
Police applied baton-charge and lobbed teargas shells to the rally besides firing shots in air at Abdullah Haroon Road in Saddar area.
Police took into custody Pasban president Altaf Shakoor and Dr Siddiqui along with a dozen other Pasban activists for attempting to enter the “red zone” of the metropolis.
Pasban had announced to besiege the US consulate in protest to highlight the plights of Dr Aafia, presently languishing in a US jail.
The protestors had earlier gathered at Masjid-e-Khizra at 3.30pm, next to Sindh High Court, carrying placards and banners inscribed with anti-US sentiments and chanting slogans against the government for dealing the matter with hands-off approach.
A Pasban spokesman expressed strong resentment over arrest of their leaders and demanded of the police to immediately release them.
He said their rally was completely peaceful. However, police deliberately developed a chaotic situation after opening aerial firing and using water cannon.
He said Pasban workers were extremely agitated on brutal use of force by the police, warning if the arrested leaders were not released the administration would be responsible for law and order situation.
In a latest development, the arrested leaders, including Dr Fauzia, were released by the authorities.
Police disperses rally for Dr Aafia in Karachi
Policewomen escort Dr Fouzia Siddiqui after her arrest during Pasban protest rally for the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui at Abdullah Haroon road in Karachi on Friday. – Photo by PPI
KARACHI: Police on Friday baton-charged and used water cannons to disperse a protest rally of Pasban that intended to march towards the US Consulate in Karachi to raise the issue of detention of Dr Aafia Siddiqui.
About a dozen protest leaders including sister of the detained Pakistani Dr Fouzia Siddiqui were arrested.
Police applied baton-charge and lobbed teargas shells to the rally besides firing shots in air at Abdullah Haroon Road in Saddar area.
Police took into custody Pasban president Altaf Shakoor and Dr Siddiqui along with a dozen other Pasban activists for attempting to enter the “red zone” of the metropolis.
Pasban had announced to besiege the US consulate in protest to highlight the plights of Dr Aafia, presently languishing in a US jail.
The protestors had earlier gathered at Masjid-e-Khizra at 3.30pm, next to Sindh High Court, carrying placards and banners inscribed with anti-US sentiments and chanting slogans against the government for dealing the matter with hands-off approach.
A Pasban spokesman expressed strong resentment over arrest of their leaders and demanded of the police to immediately release them.
He said their rally was completely peaceful. However, police deliberately developed a chaotic situation after opening aerial firing and using water cannon.
He said Pasban workers were extremely agitated on brutal use of force by the police, warning if the arrested leaders were not released the administration would be responsible for law and order situation.
In a latest development, the arrested leaders, including Dr Fauzia, were released by the authorities.
US Court to hear Aafia's lawyers appeal against sentence
Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, was sentenced to 86 years in prison by the Federal District Court in New York City. PHOTO: REUTERS
NEW YORK: A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals is set to hear an appeal by Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s lawyers, against her September 2010 conviction on charges for attempting to kill American intelligence officers in Afghanistan in 2008.
On February 9, her counsel, Dawn Cardi, will present her argument before the panel to overturn the judgement against her client, while the prosecution will seek dismissal of the appeal.
Dr Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, was sentenced to 86 years in prison by the Federal District Court in New York City, while she has consistently denied the charges levelled against her, pleading her innocence.
On April 2011, her lawyers had filed an appeal. Her court-appointed lawyer Cardi says the ‘multifaceted’ appeal will challenge the “court’s decision, the several legal issues with the trial, the introduction of evidence as well as how Siddiqui was allowed to testify given what we believe was her diminished capacity.”
However less than a month after the sentencing, Siddiqui fired her lawyers and waived her right to an appeal. Siddiqui wrote that she had fired her five lawyers and would be represented by Farha Ahmed, a Texas-based attorney.
Cardi had said that she had been in touch with Siddiqui’s family through a representative. When asked if they were supportive of the appeal, she said, “I don’t know nor do I care. It is my responsibility and I am obligated to file an appeal.”
Recently, there were reports that Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman met with Tina Foster, Dr Siddiqui’s lawyer from International Justice Network.
Foster had apprised the ambassador of her client’s situation and discussed with her various options to ease Aafia’s conditions of incarceration, and in the long term, her repatriation to Pakistan.
Arrested in July 2008 in Ghazni, Afghanistan, on allegations of being an al Qaeda operative and facilitator, Siddiqui was flown to New York where she was kept in a high security prison.
The neuroscientist’s case, who is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, has garnered global attention, particularly Pakistan, where protests demanding her release and repatriation to the country are held regularly by political and religious parties.
Human Rights groups have also conducted campaigns demanding her release or a lenient sentence.
February 8, 2012
Mr.Asif Ali Zardari,
President,
Islamic republic of Pakistan,
Re: Aafia’s Upcoming Appeal Process, the Role of Your Government, and Broken promises.
Dear Sir,
This Friday, February 10, 2012, the world will be watching as court-appointed attorneys (who are paid by the US government, and Aafia has repeatedly attempted to fire) – will argue before a US Court of Appeals and purport to represent my sister’s interests against her will. This mockery of justice is simply yet another example of how Aafia’s conviction of a crime she did not commit is virtually guaranteed in the US “justice” system. Meanwhile, US agents who have perpetrated crimes against her – including kidnapping, torture, assault, and false imprisonment, have not been called to account.
It has now been three and a half years since agents of the US government shot my sister and the beginning of the 10th year since she was abducted – a Pakistani citizen – abducted from Pakistan through a rendition operation locked up in Afghanistan, and forcibly removed from Afghanistan after an implausible shoot out, and illegally transferred her to the United States.
So-called “high-profile” American criminal defense attorneys convinced the government of Pakistan to pay them millions of dollars – and then refused to resign when Aafia did not accept them. Neither did the Pakistani Government intervene. There can no longer be any doubt that Aafia will never receive justice in the US legal system.
I want to remind you today of the promises that you made, your Prime Minister made, Interior Ministry made and Foreign Ministry made. The promises that said Aafia will be back. Raymond Davis and several other mercenaries have walked free from our land, but innocent citizens are languishing due to the negligence and criminal silence of your administration.
Now, more than ever, the fate of this Daughter of the Nation lies in the hands of the Pakistani government to bring her home. We can only but request and protest, How you respond to our plea’s will be your legacy and will define our nation, let it be of Pride not Shame.
Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui
US Court to hear Aafia's lawyers appeal against sentence
Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, was sentenced to 86 years in prison by the Federal District Court in New York City. PHOTO: REUTERS
NEW YORK: A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals is set to hear an appeal by Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s lawyers, against her September 2010 conviction on charges for attempting to kill American intelligence officers in Afghanistan in 2008.
On February 9, her counsel, Dawn Cardi, will present her argument before the panel to overturn the judgement against her client, while the prosecution will seek dismissal of the appeal.
Dr Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, was sentenced to 86 years in prison by the Federal District Court in New York City, while she has consistently denied the charges levelled against her, pleading her innocence.
On April 2011, her lawyers had filed an appeal. Her court-appointed lawyer Cardi says the ‘multifaceted’ appeal will challenge the “court’s decision, the several legal issues with the trial, the introduction of evidence as well as how Siddiqui was allowed to testify given what we believe was her diminished capacity.”
However less than a month after the sentencing, Siddiqui fired her lawyers and waived her right to an appeal. Siddiqui wrote that she had fired her five lawyers and would be represented by Farha Ahmed, a Texas-based attorney.
Cardi had said that she had been in touch with Siddiqui’s family through a representative. When asked if they were supportive of the appeal, she said, “I don’t know nor do I care. It is my responsibility and I am obligated to file an appeal.”
Recently, there were reports that Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman met with Tina Foster, Dr Siddiqui’s lawyer from International Justice Network.
Foster had apprised the ambassador of her client’s situation and discussed with her various options to ease Aafia’s conditions of incarceration, and in the long term, her repatriation to Pakistan.
Arrested in July 2008 in Ghazni, Afghanistan, on allegations of being an al Qaeda operative and facilitator, Siddiqui was flown to New York where she was kept in a high security prison.
The neuroscientist’s case, who is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, has garnered global attention, particularly Pakistan, where protests demanding her release and repatriation to the country are held regularly by political and religious parties.
Human Rights groups have also conducted campaigns demanding her release or a lenient sentence.
February 8, 2012
Mr.Asif Ali Zardari,
President,
Islamic republic of Pakistan,
Re: Aafia’s Upcoming Appeal Process, the Role of Your Government, and Broken promises.
Dear Sir,
This Friday, February 10, 2012, the world will be watching as court-appointed attorneys (who are paid by the US government, and Aafia has repeatedly attempted to fire) – will argue before a US Court of Appeals and purport to represent my sister’s interests against her will. This mockery of justice is simply yet another example of how Aafia’s conviction of a crime she did not commit is virtually guaranteed in the US “justice” system. Meanwhile, US agents who have perpetrated crimes against her – including kidnapping, torture, assault, and false imprisonment, have not been called to account.
It has now been three and a half years since agents of the US government shot my sister and the beginning of the 10th year since she was abducted – a Pakistani citizen – abducted from Pakistan through a rendition operation locked up in Afghanistan, and forcibly removed from Afghanistan after an implausible shoot out, and illegally transferred her to the United States.
So-called “high-profile” American criminal defense attorneys convinced the government of Pakistan to pay them millions of dollars – and then refused to resign when Aafia did not accept them. Neither did the Pakistani Government intervene. There can no longer be any doubt that Aafia will never receive justice in the US legal system.
I want to remind you today of the promises that you made, your Prime Minister made, Interior Ministry made and Foreign Ministry made. The promises that said Aafia will be back. Raymond Davis and several other mercenaries have walked free from our land, but innocent citizens are languishing due to the negligence and criminal silence of your administration.
Now, more than ever, the fate of this Daughter of the Nation lies in the hands of the Pakistani government to bring her home. We can only but request and protest, How you respond to our plea’s will be your legacy and will define our nation, let it be of Pride not Shame.
Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui
Support the Eco-Prisoners (February 2012)
(February 2012)
Produced by
EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK
"The whole experience has been tough, but all the kind and strengthening words and
wise thoughts from strangers made it much easier!" (Former Swedish Animal Rights
Prisoner)
Welcome to the February 2012 edition of Spirit of Freedom. On the 2nd of February
2012, American animal rights activist, Victor VanOrden, pleaded guilty to raiding a
mink farm and was sentenced to five years imprisonment. His wife Kellie has yet to
enter a plea concerning the same charges. ELP does not have an address for Victor
yet but if anyone knows where Victor is currently being held please contact ELP as
soon as possible.
As always ELP aims to bring you the names and addresses of activists jailed around
the world. Not all of the prisoners listed in this newsletter are as famous or as
well known as some of the others who are also listed in the newsletter. However,
all of the prisoners deserve our support and all welcome letters of support. So
please, no matter where you are in the world, no matter what language you speak,
support the eco-prisoners. And no compromise in defence of Mother Earth!
If anyone notices any of ELP's prisoner details is out of date or we do not list a
prisoner who we should list, please let ELP know as soon as possible. ELP is run by
a small group of volunteers and although we try to ensure our lists are accurate, we
admit we do make mistakes. So help us help keep the lists accurate by letting us
know of any changes we need to make.
ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS
Grant Barnes #137563, San Carlos Correctional Facility, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002,
USA. Serving 12 years for setting fire to a number of SUV vehicles. The letters ELF
were spray painted onto all of the vehicles. (Grant is a vegan).
Luca Bernasconi, Gefängnis Pfäffikon, Hörnlistrasse 55, 8330 Pfäffikon (ZH),
Switzerland. Serving 3 years 6 months for possession of explosive materials. Luca
is Swiss and is a known animal rights and prisoner support activist. Although not
linked to Il Silvestre himself, other defendants in this case are linked to Il
Silvestre (Luca is a vegan)
Nathan Block, #36359-086, FCI Lompoc, Federal Correctional Institution, 3600 Guard
Road, Lompoc, CA 93436, USA. Serving 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a
Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV dealership. Also admitted his role
in an ELF/ALF conspiracy. (Diet unknown).
Marco Camenisch, Justizvollzugsanstalt Lenzburg, Postfach 75, 5600 Lenzburg,
Switzerland. Serving 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explosives to destroy
electricity pylons leading from nuclear power stations. 2) Eight years for the
murder of a Swiss Boarder Guard whilst on the run. In '02 Marco completed a 12-year
sentence in Italy for destroying electricity pylons in Italy. (Marco is a meat eater
who encourages organic living).
Tim DeChristopher, #16156-081, FCI Herlon, Federal Correctional Institute, PO Box
800, Herlong, CA 96113, USA. Serving 2 years for making fake bids in an auction to
disrupt attempts by oil and gas companies to buy land. (Diet unknown).
Silvia Guerini, Bezirksgefängnis Zürich, Postfach 1266, CH – 8026 Zurigo,
Switzerland. Serving 3 years and 4 months for possession of explosive materials.
Silvia is an Italian linked to Il Silvestre. (Silvia is a vegan)
Marie Jeanette Mason, 04672-061, FMC Carswell, P.O. Box 27137, Fort Worth, TX 76127,
USA. Serving 21 years and 10 months for her involvement in an ELF arson against a
University Professors Office as the Professor was linked to Genetically Modified
crop testing. Marie also admitted destroying logging equipment. She also pleaded
guilty to conspiring to carry out ELF actions and admitted involvement in 11 other
ELF actions and 1 ALF action. (Marie is a vegan).
Eric McDavid 16209-097, FCI TERMINAL ISLAND, FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION, PO
BOX 3007, SAN PEDRO, CA 90731, USA. Serving 19 years & 7 months for planning to
destroy the property of the U.S. Forestry Service, mobile phone masts and power
plants. At the point of his arrest no criminal damage has actually occurred. (Eric
is a vegan).
Daniel McGowan, #63794-053, FCI Terre Haute – CMU, Post Office Box 33, Terre Haute,
Indiana 47408, USA. Serving 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and
an ELF arson against an old growth logging corporation. Also admitted his role in an
ELF/ALF conspiracy. (Daniel is a vegetarian).
Steve Murphy, 39013-177, FCI Beaumont Medium, Federal Correctional Institution, P.O.
Box 26040, Beaumont, TX 77720, USA. Serving 5 years for Conspiracy to Commit Arson
following an attempted arson at a town house construction site in 2006. The action
was claimed under the banner of the ELF. (Steve is a vegan).
Costantino Ragusa, PF 3143, 8105 Regensdorf, Switzerland. Serving 3 years and 8
months for possession of explosive materials. Costatino is an Italian linked to Il
Silvestre. (Costatino is a vegan)
Justin Solondz, #98291-011, FDC SEATAC, FEDERAL DETENTION CENTER, P.O. BOX 13900,
SEATTLE, WA 98198, USA. On remand accused of ELF & ALF activity. (Justin is a
vegan).
Michael Sykes 696693, Michigan Reformatory, 1342 West Main Street, Ionia, MI 48846,
USA. Serving four to ten years for anti-sprawl arsons, criminal damage to a utility
pole, spray-painting political graffiti and burning the American flag. (Diet
unknown)
Joyanna Zacher, #36360-086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA
94568, USA. Serving 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm
and an ELF arson against an SUV dealership. Also admitted her role in an ELF/ALF
conspiracy. (Diet unknown).
ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Animal Liberation Prisoners follow a minimum vegetarian diet and most are vegan).
Diego Alonso (address unknown, jailed in Mexico– E-mail letters of support to
rabiayaccion@mac.hush.com) On remand accussed of targeting banks, slaughterhouses
and other institutions. (Diego is a vegan)
Walter Bond #2011-03339, Davis County Jail, PO Box 130, Farmington, UT 84025-0130,
USA. Serving 12 years for an ALF arson at a Sheepskin factory, a leather factory
and a foie gras restaurant. (Walter is a vegan).
Mel Broughton, A3892AE, HMP Bullingdon, PO Box 50, Oxford, OX25 1WD, England.
Serving ten years for his active campaigning against vivisection carried out by
Oxford University. The police set him up and accused him of plotting an arson
against the University. (Mel is a vegan).
Adrian Magdaleno Gonzales (address unkown, jailed in Mexico – E-mail letters of
support to libertadparaadrian@hushmail.me). Serving 7 years 11 months for
detonating a gas bombs against various targets including banks and against targets
whose actions were claimed by the Frente de Liberación Animal (ALF). (Adrian is a
vegan).
Marie Mason - See details in Eco Defence Prisoners List.
Daniel McGowan - See details in Eco Defence Prisoners List.
Gavin Medd-Hall A3624AD, HMP Coldingley, Shaftesbury Road, Bisley, Woking, Surrey
GU24 9EX, England. Serving 8 years for conspiracy to blackmail Huntingdon Life
Sciences. (Gavin is a vegan).
Heather Nicholson A3158AJ, HMP Foston Hall, Foston, Derby, Derbyshire, DE65 5DN,
England. Serving 11 years for conspiracy to blackmail Huntingdon Life Sciences.
(Heather is a vegan).
Justin Solondz - See details in Eco Defence Prisoners List.
Victor VanOrden (address unknown). Serving five years for raiding a mink farm.
(Victor is a vegan).
Sarah Whitehead, A8369CE, HMP Downview, Sutton Lane, Surrey, SM2 5PD, England.
Serving six years campaigning against Huntingdon Life Sciences. Was previously
sentenced to two years for: 1) rescuing a puppy from horrific conditions. 2)
rescuing over 100 animals from a pet breeder who was later prosecuted for animal
abuse. (Sarah is a vegan)
PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS
No current Ploughshares prisoners.
ANTIFA PRISONERS
Aleksey Bychin, FBU OIK-2 IK-7 otryad No. 12, ul. Karnallitovaya d. 98, g. Solikamsk
Permskiy Kray, 618545 Russia. Serving 5 years for defending himself against
neo-nazis. (Diet unknown).
Phil De Sousa, A5766CE, HMP Elmley, Church Road, Eastchurch, Sheerness, Kent, ME12
4DZ, England. Serving 21 months. (Diet unknown).
Ravinder Gill, A5770CE, HMP Wayland, Griston, Thetford, Norfolk, IP25 6RL, England.
Serving 21 months. (Diet Unknown).
Austen Jackson, A5729CE, HMP Wormwood Scrubs, PO Box 757, Du Cane Rd, London, W12
OAE, England. Serving 15 months. (Diet unknown).
Rinat Sultanov, Mindullich, )tryd No.7, ul. Svobodu d.22, FKU IK-53, pos.
Privokzalynui, Sverdlovskaya oblast, 195009 Russia. Serving 2 years for fighting
with neo-nazis. (Rint is a Vegetarian).
OTHER PRISONERS
Ihar Alinevich, c/o P.O. Box 8, Glavpochtampt, 220050 Minsk, Belarus. Jailed for a
variety of reasons including alleged anti-mititarism and alleged involvement in
solidarity actions for two jailed Russian environmentalists. (Diet unknown)
Mikalaj Dziadok, SIZO-1, ul. Volodarskogo 2, 220050 Minsk, Belarus. Jailed for a
variety of reasons including alleged anti-mititarism and alleged involvement in
solidarity actions for two jailed Russian environmentalists. (Diet unknown)
Aliaksandar Frantskievich, Valadarskaha str., 2, SIZO-1, k. 46, Minsk, Belarus.
Co-defendant of Ihar Alinevich and Mikalaj Dziadok. (Diet unknown)
Fran Thompson, #1090915, CCC, 3151 Litton Drive, Chillicuthe, MO 64601, USA. Serving
Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalker who had broken into her home. Before
her imprisonment Fran was an eco, animal & anti-nuke campaigner. (Fran is a vegan).
MOVE
MOVE is an eco-revolutionary group who carried out protests in defence of all life.
All move prisoners describe themselves as vegetarians. There are currently eight
MOVE activists in prison each serving 100 years after been framed for the murder of
a cop in 1979. 9th defendant, Merle Africa, died in prison in 1998.
Debbie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Holloway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips
Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cambridge Springs, 451 Fullerton Ave, Cambridge Springs,
PA 16403-1238, USA.
Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) SCI Graterford, PO Box 244, Graterford, PA 19426-0244,
USA.
Edward Goodman Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.
William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Delbert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dallas
Drawer K, Dallas, PA 18612, USA.
Charles Simms Africa (AM4975), SCI Retreat, 660 State Route 11, Hunlock Creek, PA
18621, USA.
Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg PA 15370, USA.
In 1981 Mumia, former Black Panther and vocal supporter of MOVE, was framed for the
murder of a cop. He was originally sentenced to death but is currently awaiting
re-sentencing following a court hearing in
2001.
STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some people listed in this newsletter have carried out violent actions including
assault and murder. 'Spirit of Freedom' does not condone violence. But we are also
against censorship & believe people can decide
for themselves who they wish to support.
ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an international eco-prisoner support network founded, in Britain, in 1993 to
support jailed eco-activists. We support the prisoners by producing various regular
prisoner lists:
Spirit of Freedom is ELP's international monthly prisoner listing which is
circulated by e-mail.
Urgent ELP! Bulletin is an e-mail service that distributes the names of any new
eco-prisoner as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e-mail
ELP4321@hotmail.com
On-Line Newsletters - ELP has a number of websites that provide news, prisoner lists
and additional info about ELP & the prisoners.
Find us under Earth Liberation Prisoners
English language ELP Website
new site coming soon
Greek language ELP Website
http://greekelp.blogspot.com
North American ELP Website
www.ecoprisoners.org
ELP Extra is an e-mail group that circulates the details of political prisoners, ELP
learns about, who do not fall within the remit for support by ELP. To subscribe to
the list e-mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com
Support the Eco-Prisoners (February 2012)
(February 2012)
Produced by
EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK
"The whole experience has been tough, but all the kind and strengthening words and
wise thoughts from strangers made it much easier!" (Former Swedish Animal Rights
Prisoner)
Welcome to the February 2012 edition of Spirit of Freedom. On the 2nd of February
2012, American animal rights activist, Victor VanOrden, pleaded guilty to raiding a
mink farm and was sentenced to five years imprisonment. His wife Kellie has yet to
enter a plea concerning the same charges. ELP does not have an address for Victor
yet but if anyone knows where Victor is currently being held please contact ELP as
soon as possible.
As always ELP aims to bring you the names and addresses of activists jailed around
the world. Not all of the prisoners listed in this newsletter are as famous or as
well known as some of the others who are also listed in the newsletter. However,
all of the prisoners deserve our support and all welcome letters of support. So
please, no matter where you are in the world, no matter what language you speak,
support the eco-prisoners. And no compromise in defence of Mother Earth!
If anyone notices any of ELP's prisoner details is out of date or we do not list a
prisoner who we should list, please let ELP know as soon as possible. ELP is run by
a small group of volunteers and although we try to ensure our lists are accurate, we
admit we do make mistakes. So help us help keep the lists accurate by letting us
know of any changes we need to make.
ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS
Grant Barnes #137563, San Carlos Correctional Facility, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002,
USA. Serving 12 years for setting fire to a number of SUV vehicles. The letters ELF
were spray painted onto all of the vehicles. (Grant is a vegan).
Luca Bernasconi, Gefängnis Pfäffikon, Hörnlistrasse 55, 8330 Pfäffikon (ZH),
Switzerland. Serving 3 years 6 months for possession of explosive materials. Luca
is Swiss and is a known animal rights and prisoner support activist. Although not
linked to Il Silvestre himself, other defendants in this case are linked to Il
Silvestre (Luca is a vegan)
Nathan Block, #36359-086, FCI Lompoc, Federal Correctional Institution, 3600 Guard
Road, Lompoc, CA 93436, USA. Serving 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a
Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV dealership. Also admitted his role
in an ELF/ALF conspiracy. (Diet unknown).
Marco Camenisch, Justizvollzugsanstalt Lenzburg, Postfach 75, 5600 Lenzburg,
Switzerland. Serving 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explosives to destroy
electricity pylons leading from nuclear power stations. 2) Eight years for the
murder of a Swiss Boarder Guard whilst on the run. In '02 Marco completed a 12-year
sentence in Italy for destroying electricity pylons in Italy. (Marco is a meat eater
who encourages organic living).
Tim DeChristopher, #16156-081, FCI Herlon, Federal Correctional Institute, PO Box
800, Herlong, CA 96113, USA. Serving 2 years for making fake bids in an auction to
disrupt attempts by oil and gas companies to buy land. (Diet unknown).
Silvia Guerini, Bezirksgefängnis Zürich, Postfach 1266, CH – 8026 Zurigo,
Switzerland. Serving 3 years and 4 months for possession of explosive materials.
Silvia is an Italian linked to Il Silvestre. (Silvia is a vegan)
Marie Jeanette Mason, 04672-061, FMC Carswell, P.O. Box 27137, Fort Worth, TX 76127,
USA. Serving 21 years and 10 months for her involvement in an ELF arson against a
University Professors Office as the Professor was linked to Genetically Modified
crop testing. Marie also admitted destroying logging equipment. She also pleaded
guilty to conspiring to carry out ELF actions and admitted involvement in 11 other
ELF actions and 1 ALF action. (Marie is a vegan).
Eric McDavid 16209-097, FCI TERMINAL ISLAND, FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION, PO
BOX 3007, SAN PEDRO, CA 90731, USA. Serving 19 years & 7 months for planning to
destroy the property of the U.S. Forestry Service, mobile phone masts and power
plants. At the point of his arrest no criminal damage has actually occurred. (Eric
is a vegan).
Daniel McGowan, #63794-053, FCI Terre Haute – CMU, Post Office Box 33, Terre Haute,
Indiana 47408, USA. Serving 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and
an ELF arson against an old growth logging corporation. Also admitted his role in an
ELF/ALF conspiracy. (Daniel is a vegetarian).
Steve Murphy, 39013-177, FCI Beaumont Medium, Federal Correctional Institution, P.O.
Box 26040, Beaumont, TX 77720, USA. Serving 5 years for Conspiracy to Commit Arson
following an attempted arson at a town house construction site in 2006. The action
was claimed under the banner of the ELF. (Steve is a vegan).
Costantino Ragusa, PF 3143, 8105 Regensdorf, Switzerland. Serving 3 years and 8
months for possession of explosive materials. Costatino is an Italian linked to Il
Silvestre. (Costatino is a vegan)
Justin Solondz, #98291-011, FDC SEATAC, FEDERAL DETENTION CENTER, P.O. BOX 13900,
SEATTLE, WA 98198, USA. On remand accused of ELF & ALF activity. (Justin is a
vegan).
Michael Sykes 696693, Michigan Reformatory, 1342 West Main Street, Ionia, MI 48846,
USA. Serving four to ten years for anti-sprawl arsons, criminal damage to a utility
pole, spray-painting political graffiti and burning the American flag. (Diet
unknown)
Joyanna Zacher, #36360-086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA
94568, USA. Serving 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm
and an ELF arson against an SUV dealership. Also admitted her role in an ELF/ALF
conspiracy. (Diet unknown).
ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Animal Liberation Prisoners follow a minimum vegetarian diet and most are vegan).
Diego Alonso (address unknown, jailed in Mexico– E-mail letters of support to
rabiayaccion@mac.hush.com) On remand accussed of targeting banks, slaughterhouses
and other institutions. (Diego is a vegan)
Walter Bond #2011-03339, Davis County Jail, PO Box 130, Farmington, UT 84025-0130,
USA. Serving 12 years for an ALF arson at a Sheepskin factory, a leather factory
and a foie gras restaurant. (Walter is a vegan).
Mel Broughton, A3892AE, HMP Bullingdon, PO Box 50, Oxford, OX25 1WD, England.
Serving ten years for his active campaigning against vivisection carried out by
Oxford University. The police set him up and accused him of plotting an arson
against the University. (Mel is a vegan).
Adrian Magdaleno Gonzales (address unkown, jailed in Mexico – E-mail letters of
support to libertadparaadrian@hushmail.me). Serving 7 years 11 months for
detonating a gas bombs against various targets including banks and against targets
whose actions were claimed by the Frente de Liberación Animal (ALF). (Adrian is a
vegan).
Marie Mason - See details in Eco Defence Prisoners List.
Daniel McGowan - See details in Eco Defence Prisoners List.
Gavin Medd-Hall A3624AD, HMP Coldingley, Shaftesbury Road, Bisley, Woking, Surrey
GU24 9EX, England. Serving 8 years for conspiracy to blackmail Huntingdon Life
Sciences. (Gavin is a vegan).
Heather Nicholson A3158AJ, HMP Foston Hall, Foston, Derby, Derbyshire, DE65 5DN,
England. Serving 11 years for conspiracy to blackmail Huntingdon Life Sciences.
(Heather is a vegan).
Justin Solondz - See details in Eco Defence Prisoners List.
Victor VanOrden (address unknown). Serving five years for raiding a mink farm.
(Victor is a vegan).
Sarah Whitehead, A8369CE, HMP Downview, Sutton Lane, Surrey, SM2 5PD, England.
Serving six years campaigning against Huntingdon Life Sciences. Was previously
sentenced to two years for: 1) rescuing a puppy from horrific conditions. 2)
rescuing over 100 animals from a pet breeder who was later prosecuted for animal
abuse. (Sarah is a vegan)
PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS
No current Ploughshares prisoners.
ANTIFA PRISONERS
Aleksey Bychin, FBU OIK-2 IK-7 otryad No. 12, ul. Karnallitovaya d. 98, g. Solikamsk
Permskiy Kray, 618545 Russia. Serving 5 years for defending himself against
neo-nazis. (Diet unknown).
Phil De Sousa, A5766CE, HMP Elmley, Church Road, Eastchurch, Sheerness, Kent, ME12
4DZ, England. Serving 21 months. (Diet unknown).
Ravinder Gill, A5770CE, HMP Wayland, Griston, Thetford, Norfolk, IP25 6RL, England.
Serving 21 months. (Diet Unknown).
Austen Jackson, A5729CE, HMP Wormwood Scrubs, PO Box 757, Du Cane Rd, London, W12
OAE, England. Serving 15 months. (Diet unknown).
Rinat Sultanov, Mindullich, )tryd No.7, ul. Svobodu d.22, FKU IK-53, pos.
Privokzalynui, Sverdlovskaya oblast, 195009 Russia. Serving 2 years for fighting
with neo-nazis. (Rint is a Vegetarian).
OTHER PRISONERS
Ihar Alinevich, c/o P.O. Box 8, Glavpochtampt, 220050 Minsk, Belarus. Jailed for a
variety of reasons including alleged anti-mititarism and alleged involvement in
solidarity actions for two jailed Russian environmentalists. (Diet unknown)
Mikalaj Dziadok, SIZO-1, ul. Volodarskogo 2, 220050 Minsk, Belarus. Jailed for a
variety of reasons including alleged anti-mititarism and alleged involvement in
solidarity actions for two jailed Russian environmentalists. (Diet unknown)
Aliaksandar Frantskievich, Valadarskaha str., 2, SIZO-1, k. 46, Minsk, Belarus.
Co-defendant of Ihar Alinevich and Mikalaj Dziadok. (Diet unknown)
Fran Thompson, #1090915, CCC, 3151 Litton Drive, Chillicuthe, MO 64601, USA. Serving
Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalker who had broken into her home. Before
her imprisonment Fran was an eco, animal & anti-nuke campaigner. (Fran is a vegan).
MOVE
MOVE is an eco-revolutionary group who carried out protests in defence of all life.
All move prisoners describe themselves as vegetarians. There are currently eight
MOVE activists in prison each serving 100 years after been framed for the murder of
a cop in 1979. 9th defendant, Merle Africa, died in prison in 1998.
Debbie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Holloway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips
Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cambridge Springs, 451 Fullerton Ave, Cambridge Springs,
PA 16403-1238, USA.
Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) SCI Graterford, PO Box 244, Graterford, PA 19426-0244,
USA.
Edward Goodman Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.
William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Delbert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dallas
Drawer K, Dallas, PA 18612, USA.
Charles Simms Africa (AM4975), SCI Retreat, 660 State Route 11, Hunlock Creek, PA
18621, USA.
Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg PA 15370, USA.
In 1981 Mumia, former Black Panther and vocal supporter of MOVE, was framed for the
murder of a cop. He was originally sentenced to death but is currently awaiting
re-sentencing following a court hearing in
2001.
STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some people listed in this newsletter have carried out violent actions including
assault and murder. 'Spirit of Freedom' does not condone violence. But we are also
against censorship & believe people can decide
for themselves who they wish to support.
ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an international eco-prisoner support network founded, in Britain, in 1993 to
support jailed eco-activists. We support the prisoners by producing various regular
prisoner lists:
Spirit of Freedom is ELP's international monthly prisoner listing which is
circulated by e-mail.
Urgent ELP! Bulletin is an e-mail service that distributes the names of any new
eco-prisoner as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e-mail
ELP4321@hotmail.com
On-Line Newsletters - ELP has a number of websites that provide news, prisoner lists
and additional info about ELP & the prisoners.
Find us under Earth Liberation Prisoners
English language ELP Website
new site coming soon
Greek language ELP Website
http://greekelp.blogspot.com
North American ELP Website
www.ecoprisoners.org
ELP Extra is an e-mail group that circulates the details of political prisoners, ELP
learns about, who do not fall within the remit for support by ELP. To subscribe to
the list e-mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com
Jazz Hayden and the Fight Against Stop-and-Frisk
Jazz Hayden might be the most unlikely character in the long-running controversy over the NYPD's stop-and-frisk campaign, which has affected more than 4 million New Yorkers since 2004.
Lyric Cabral Jazz Hayden stands where he alleges police illegally searched his car in December 2011. After the search yielded a penknife, Hayden was arrested on a felony weapons charge. Lyric Cabral Hayden, a longtime Harlem community activist, films stop-and-frisks and then posts the videos to the Internet as part of his Copwatch program. Hayden plans to sue the NYPD for improper stop and arrest after he was pulled over by police in December.The 70-year-old Hayden, whose given name is Joseph, is a longtime community activist in Harlem. In a past life, he was a street hustler who served three years in prison in the late 1950s for drugs, was falsely accused in the late 1960s in a high-profile shooting of two police officers in the politically turbulent year of 1968, was convicted of money laundering in the 1970s, and served 13 years in prison from 1986 to 2000 for manslaughter after a traffic dispute turned fatal.
Hayden has spent the past four years irritating police officers by videotaping them as they stop and frisk people in Harlem in a program he calls "Copwatch." He often posts the videos on the Internet. For most of that period, he encountered little more than annoyed cops, but recently, his activities might have caught up with him.
Last summer, Hayden filmed two plainclothes officers during an evening car stop. The exchange between Hayden and the officers was contentious, even though the two motorists who were stopped were let go without charges.
At least one officer was aware of Hayden's past, because at one point, he can be heard saying: "You done selling drugs yet or what? I know your rap sheet." And then later, the tape shows, the same officer can be heard saying: "Go sell some more drugs, sir. We know your background. I know who you are."
Then, on December 2, as Hayden drove away after a meeting at Riverside Church, the same two officers stopped him, searched him, and arrested him for possession of a penknife. "We know you," one of them said.
"These guys knew who I was," Hayden says, calling it "NYPD officers taking revenge on me. . . . It was clear retaliation."
Chris Woods, a 35-year-old security guard, happened to be walking by and witnessed the police stop Hayden. "He didn't say anything offensive or abusive to the officers, but that wasn't good enough for them," Woods says. "That he was talking with them seemed to make them more furious. The whole thing shouldn't even have been a criminal matter."
What probably should have been a minor incident became 48 hours in holding cells and a felony weapons charge against the activist. Hayden's arrest has also become something of a cause in Harlem.
Among other events, Hayden's allies organized a protest at the Manhattan Supreme Court on January 19, one of his court dates. The protest was attended by elected officials and activists. The board of the radio station WBAI, where Hayden was once a producer, passed a resolution in support of him.
In 2010, the NYPD, in a campaign touted by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as a key element in the war on crime, stopped more than 600,000 people throughout the city. From 2004 to 2009, police stopped 2.8 million people; the largest age group is males 15 to 19, following by males ages 20 to 24. Just 9 percent of the stops resulted in an arrest. And in 2011, the police were on pace for 686,000 stops—a new record.
In the 2010 Voice series "The NYPD Tapes," police supervisors in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant order cops to make a quota of one or two stops per tour. Police Officer Adil Polanco, who was assigned to a Bronx precinct, said similarly that there was a stop-and-frisk quota there. If those orders are typical for most precincts—and that appears to be the case from the tapes and Polanco's statements—then quotas are a key factor in fueling the rise in stops.
Even so, Kelly has said repeatedly that the stops keep people from carrying weapons, drugs, and other illicit items on the street. He said it again most recently in a December 11 affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit: "Stops serve as a deterrent to criminal activity."
He has been backed on this by Mayor Bloomberg, the New York Post and Daily News editorial pages, and commentators including the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald, who tied the stops to the crime decline and declared that the campaign "saves minorities' lives."
And yet the campaign has spawned ongoing opposition not only from elected officials and activists but also from regular New Yorkers. Last September, police stopped and handcuffed Councilman Jumaane Williams and an associate at Brooklyn's West Indian Day Parade.
Williams raised a fuss, which led police spokesman Paul Browne to claim that someone had punched a police officer during the incident. Williams called that claim a "bald-faced lie," and Browne hasn't uttered another word about it since.
But aside from public opinion, there's a major cost to the campaign in actual dollars. Over the past couple of years, the number of lawsuits filed by New Yorkers alleging improper stop-and-frisks has continued to grow. There might be some element of lawyers seeing a new area in the always-busy police-litigation business, but the rise also indicates a frustration among New Yorkers with the practice.
In the month of January alone, more than three dozen lawsuits alleging improper stop-and-frisks were filed, based on a Voice reading of the complaints. Extrapolated, that means that the city could be sued more than 400 times this year alone just on improper stops.
If each case settles for a minimum of $10,000, that's at least $4 million in cost to taxpayers, not including the cost to the police department in work hours assembling the documents and removing cops from the street to be deposed, and the cost to the corporation counsel in paying lawyers to defend those cases. One wonders how much money the city is willing to spend on this litigation just to stick with the police commissioner's campaign. (We asked the city law department this question but did not receive a response.)
The people who filed suit last month appear to come from all walks of life—an auto mechanic, two high school students, a commuter, a Transit Authority worker, a guy walking home with a bag full of dog food. In all of the cases, the criminal charges, if any, were dismissed.
Lyric Cabral The majority of New Yorkers targeted in stop-and-frisks are young black and Hispanic males. “Harlem is turning into an open-air prison, a minimum-security prison, and the people think it’s normal,” Hayden says. Lyric Cabral Hayden visits the 32nd Precinct in Harlem, where his arresting officers work.Take Francis Destouche, for example. Destouche, a 53-year-old auto mechanic with a clean record, was walking home in the Bronx in October 2011 when he was stopped for no apparent reason by police. They searched him, found nothing, and then accused him of "throwing something away." He was arrested, held for 20 hours, and missed his granddaughter's birth. The charges were dismissed. Destouche's lawyer, Paul Mills, alleges that the stop and the arrest were a result of the NYPD's "quota policy."
"This arrest cannot be explained by any of the common categories of false arrest," Mills says. "He's not even smoking a cigarette. So, if you eliminate the other possibilities, there's no other way to explain it other than it was for the quota."
Mills says Destouche decided to sue because missing his granddaughter's birth was significant. "There are people out there for whom at his advanced age, after a lifetime of respect for the police, to suddenly be abducted and jailed for 20 hours is very upsetting. It was a big deal to him."
Or consider the case of "M.S.," a 16-year-old Staten Island youth who says he was stopped for walking down the street, detained, and searched. His backpack was searched. He was physically restrained. Charges were eventually dismissed. The lawsuit goes on to quote at length from stop-and-frisk studies, which suggest a bias against young black and Hispanic males.
Scott Joyner was waiting for a bus in Brooklyn in June 2011 when he saw cops arresting two other people. An officer walked over and grabbed his arm but released him when he realized Joyner was just standing at the bus stop. Joyner walked to a pay phone to file a 311 complaint, and there he was arrested, he alleges, for trying to make a complaint. Charges were dismissed.
In January 2011, Jamie Jarrett was walking down a Brooklyn street when a van of cops rolled up and began searching him. They found no weapons or drugs. The officers refused to explain why they were placing him under arrest. The charge of marijuana sale was dismissed, but not before Jarrett spent 48 hours in custody.
Kenrick Gray, 32, of Staten Island, claims he was falsely stopped, searched, and detained twice in late 2010, the second time resulting in false arrest. His lawyer alleges racial profiling led to the stops.
Likewise, Jarrett Savage claims he was illegally stopped and frisked in October 2010 in Brooklyn. He was pushed against a wall, searched, and taken to the precinct, where he was strip-searched in front of another prisoner. The charges were dismissed eventually. "This is not an isolated incident," the lawsuit alleges. "The city is aware that many police officers are insufficiently trained to stop, detain, arrest, and strip-search individuals."
Ramon Morales says he was cleaning his car outside his sister's house on Cabrini Boulevard in Manhattan in August 2009 when cops stopped him for no apparent reason, accused him of drug possession, and searched him and the car. They found no drugs but charged him with a DWI, even though he wasn't driving. Eighteen court appearances and nearly two years later, the charges were dismissed. And Morales claims someone stole stuff from his car while it was in police custody.
Daryl George, a 36-year-old transit worker who had never been arrested, sued this month following a questionable stop in January 2011. George says he was talking with a friend about buying an iPod in the lobby of a Brooklyn building when police came in, ordered everyone against the wall, and searched them. George didn't have any contraband, though someone else in the lobby did. George was arrested anyway, and though the charges were dismissed and the case was sealed, he was suspended by the Transit Authority and lost five months' pay and benefits.
Kevin Adams claimed he was illegally searched and arrested in February 2010 in the lobby of the Brooklyn building where he lives with his mother. Later that day—the arrest took place at 10 a.m.—they released him because the district attorney declined to prosecute, but not before he was roughed up and strip-searched in a police van.
Gregory Pope also sued last month. He claims he was walking on Coney Island in August 2011 when he was jumped by four plainclothes officers. They searched him. He told them they couldn't just search him for no reason. After that, they arrested him and strip-searched him at the precinct. The police also took his car to the precinct, where they searched it and caused a range of damage. Pope was held in the precinct for a day and then, inexplicably, released without charges.
Schedrick Campbell was walking home with a bag of dog food in March 2011 in Brooklyn when three plainclothes officers grabbed him, accused him of swallowing drugs, and tackled him. Despite a strip search in the precinct and a series of forced and invasive medical tests over two days at Interfaith Hospital, no contraband was found. The hospital billed Campbell $9,500 for the concocted arrest.
And in April 2011, while Keenan Baskerville was walking down a Brooklyn street, he was stopped by police, accused of smoking marijuana, which he denied, and arrested. He was strip-searched, but no contraband was found. Baskerville also sued.
Monique Williams sued as well. She says that when she asked why she was stopped, a police sergeant said to her, "Because I can," a statement that doesn't appear in the NYPD's official stop-and-frisk policy.
On rare occasions, police officers can get into deep trouble for improper stops. Michael Daragjati stopped and frisked a man on Staten Island. The man complained about the stop, as the search found no contraband. Daragjati then arrested him and claimed the man had flailed his arms and kicked him.
That arrest was proved false, and Daragjati was indicted on federal civil rights violations. It didn't help that investigators caught him using racial slurs to boast about the arrest. Daragjati lost his job, pleaded guilty, and had to agree never to work as a cop again. He faces a year in jail and a $100,000 fine.
Chris Woods, the witness to Hayden's arrest, compared improper police stops here to the burgeoning scandal in East Haven, Connecticut, where the police chief had to resign after four officers were indicted for targeting, harassing, and even beating black and Latino males who threatened to report misconduct. The case grew out of a federal civil rights investigation.
"Officers are doing the same thing over here," Woods says. "It's a similar situation, but no one's doing anything about it."
Meanwhile, the endless saga that is Floyd v. City of New York continues to lumber through federal court. Floyd is a class-action lawsuit filed in 2008 by four citizens and the Center for Constitutional Rights that alleges that the NYPD's massive stop-and-frisk campaign routinely violates the civil rights of New Yorkers. (One citizen is the first named plaintiff, David Floyd, of the Bronx.)
In the latest legal maneuvering in nearly four years of litigation, the plaintiffs have asked the judge for "class certification," which would open the door for hundreds of thousands of additional plaintiffs. The city, on the other hand, is trying to block expert testimony from Jeffrey Fagan, a Columbia University professor who wrote a study of the strategy, by claiming that his use of the data was "misleading," ignored police crime-fighting innovations, "ran counter to accepted statistical practices," is "fatally flawed," "irrelevant and unreliable," and offers "speculation and conjecture."
Darius Charney, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, says the city has refused to engage in any substantive settlement talks, despite the fact the issue is "of great public concern," the judge in the case wrote. There were a couple of meetings before a magistrate judge, but Charney calls them "a complete waste of time."
Asked whether he thought the Bloomberg administration is seeking to delay an outcome until after the mayor leaves office in two years, Charney said: "I don't know what they are thinking. I do find it odd that given all the press on this, they have been completely unwilling to address these issues."
As for the NYPD's claim that the campaign acts as a deterrent to crime—the city uses the Orwellian term "pre-emptive policing"—even though it produces relatively few convictions, Charney says there is "no empirical proof" of that. "There's no study that shows that aggressive stop-and-frisk deters crime," he says. "And you have to have reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment. If they did 700,000 stops a year legally, we wouldn't have a complaint. But we contend the vast majority are illegal."
The Floyd case actually suffered a blow earlier this year, when U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that police had enough reasonable suspicion to frisk Floyd himself. Floyd had been stopped while entering his apartment building in February 2008.
Scheindlin based the decision on the city's claim that officers were acting on an ongoing pattern of burglaries in the area.
The CCR lawyers, however, went back and looked at the crime statistics for the preceding two months and found, instead, that there had been just one burglary in that area during the period. They filed a new motion based on that.
In November, Scheindlin granted the motion. She noted the new evidence was "deeply concerning to the court."
"Shockingly," Scheindlin wrote, police use the justification of "high-crime area" in stops even in low-crime areas. Fifty-five percent of stops are justified with that notation. The city justified its stop of Floyd with the high-crime notation.
"Plaintiffs have now raised severe doubts about the existence of that [burglary] pattern," Scheindlin wrote, adding that "it would be a miscarriage of justice" to deny Floyd's legal claim as a result.
Jazz Hayden, it certainly can be said, has lived in interesting times. He didn't really want to talk about the old days in a recent interview, but it's all chronicled in detail in crime journalist T.J. English's book The Savage City, which examines New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Hayden also appears in a documentary about Harlem drug kingpin Nicky Barnes titled Mr. Untouchable.
As a youth, Hayden supported himself by collecting bottles for pennies outside the Polo Grounds, shining shoes, and working for a barbershop, English writes. He became a hustler, first gambling in dice games and then running his own games. His uncle introduced him into the numbers game, and eventually, he was the person taking the bets.
English writes that in the late 1950s, Hayden, at age 16, was arrested for possession of 11 bags of heroin. He was sent to state prison for three years. He emerged from those abusive years embittered and angry, English writes.
Hayden fell into selling marijuana and heroin to survive. Meanwhile, the streets were filled with political discontent, personified in the Black Panther Party, which was at war with the police. But Hayden avoided the Panthers because survival was more important.
On September 27, 1968, a black male fired a rifle on two police officers sitting in a patrol car on 114th Street. The officers were wounded but survived. The police mobilized to catch the shooter.
Walking home with a friend, Hayden saw police around his apartment building. He had become a suspect in a high-profile crime that he had nothing to do with. He fled, until days later when the police caught up with him at a girlfriend's apartment. Hayden eventually learned that a person he knew had blamed the shooting on him under pressure from the police.
English notes that the shooter was described as about six foot four. Hayden is five foot five. Hayden was convicted anyway and sent to Attica state prison. Eighteen months later, the conviction was overturned, and Hayden was released, but he says he became a energetic critic of police tactics.
"In a time of war between the NYPD and the black liberation movement, [Hayden] was collateral damage," English writes.
The money-laundering conviction followed several years later, a result of Hayden's association with Barnes, and then the traffic dispute with a sanitation worker landed him in prison for 13 years. After he was released in 2000, he pursued several civil rights campaigns, the first being a class-action lawsuit over the fact that prisoners were denied the right to vote. In 2008, he founded Still Here Harlem Productions, a company that he envisioned offering an outlet for events the mainstream media ignored, and a website, allthingsharlem.com. Around then, he began filming stop-and-frisks. "It turned out to be the major issue in Harlem," he says.
Hayden has worked for various nonprofits since his release, done quite a bit of traveling to speak on civil rights issues, and is currently on Social Security. He has a wife of 40 years, eight children, 15 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He has been a hustler, a prisoner, but also a teacher and a scholar, even though as he says, he has been kicked out of every school he went to. He has had a summer fellowship at Harvard. "People tend to see you for one chapter in your life, but it's much more than that," he says.
One of the things Hayden does is videotape police officers performing stop-and-frisks. "I decided to tell them: 'I'm on your side. I'm here to observe you provide courtesy, professionalism, and respect,'" Hayden says. "What response could they make to that? Ray Kelly is the replaceable part. The person really upholding and sanctioning the policy is Bloomberg,"
Paolo Walker, a freelance videographer who has worked with Hayden for more than three years, says filming police "can be an intimidating experience."
A wealth of legal precedent and of course the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution makes photographing in public areas legal, but that memo apparently didn't make it to a lot of members of the NYPD.
"It is typical for the cops to give you a hard time and make threats to you to stop filming," he says. "Seeing a video of an incident and being able to put a human face on what's happening lets people see what's truly going on."
On one occasion, Walker says, officers filmed him filming them. An officer demanded his credentials and identification and insisted that he move along or else he would be arrested. In another incident, Walker says he was told "I'll get you" by an officer who told him to stop filming. Several times, Walker says cops pushed his camera and claimed they couldn't tell it was a camera.
One evening last summer, Hayden was out and came across a car stop in Harlem. Hayden videotaped the officers, who seem from the video to be fairly irritated that he was there. They not only shined their flashlights at him repeatedly, but they also told him they were aware of his prior arrests.
On December 2, Hayden left Riverside Church and was soon pulled over by the same two officers from the incident over the summer. He asked them why he was being stopped, and they eventually told him a brake light was not working. He provided his license and registration and was asked to step out of the car. Hayden claims one of the officers said: "Hey, we know you. . . . You're that murderer."
Hayden, unlike most people, was aware of his rights under the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure. He told the officers they could pat-frisk him, but they couldn't search him or his car. The officers told him to stand at the rear of the car, and they began searching it—illegally, Hayden alleges, because he hadn't consented to the search.
"They ignored me and went right into my car and began searching it," Hayden says.
The search yielded a penknife, and rather than confiscating it, the officers arrested Hayden on a felony weapons charge, and took him to the 32nd Precinct in upper Manhattan. He was held in the precinct for the next 48 hours, except for a visit to Harlem Hospital for a blood-pressure check.
In the criminal complaint, the police didn't mention the brake light. Instead, they claimed they saw him suspiciously "moving his hands on the console of his car." Hayden's supporters call that a fabrication. He also wasn't charged with any traffic violations.
"That summer, NY1 had posted some coverage of me," Hayden says. "Maybe the cops saw that, when they see me out there filming."
For now, as his case winds its way through the court system, Hayden says he'll continue videotaping police. He is also preparing to go down the same road as so many other New Yorkers and sue the NYPD for the improper stop and arrest. One of his lawyers is Sarah Kunstler, the daughter of another firebrand from the old days, civil rights attorney William Kunstler. His next court date is April 17.
Jazz Hayden and the Fight Against Stop-and-Frisk
Jazz Hayden might be the most unlikely character in the long-running controversy over the NYPD's stop-and-frisk campaign, which has affected more than 4 million New Yorkers since 2004.
Lyric Cabral Jazz Hayden stands where he alleges police illegally searched his car in December 2011. After the search yielded a penknife, Hayden was arrested on a felony weapons charge. Lyric Cabral Hayden, a longtime Harlem community activist, films stop-and-frisks and then posts the videos to the Internet as part of his Copwatch program. Hayden plans to sue the NYPD for improper stop and arrest after he was pulled over by police in December.The 70-year-old Hayden, whose given name is Joseph, is a longtime community activist in Harlem. In a past life, he was a street hustler who served three years in prison in the late 1950s for drugs, was falsely accused in the late 1960s in a high-profile shooting of two police officers in the politically turbulent year of 1968, was convicted of money laundering in the 1970s, and served 13 years in prison from 1986 to 2000 for manslaughter after a traffic dispute turned fatal.
Hayden has spent the past four years irritating police officers by videotaping them as they stop and frisk people in Harlem in a program he calls "Copwatch." He often posts the videos on the Internet. For most of that period, he encountered little more than annoyed cops, but recently, his activities might have caught up with him.
Last summer, Hayden filmed two plainclothes officers during an evening car stop. The exchange between Hayden and the officers was contentious, even though the two motorists who were stopped were let go without charges.
At least one officer was aware of Hayden's past, because at one point, he can be heard saying: "You done selling drugs yet or what? I know your rap sheet." And then later, the tape shows, the same officer can be heard saying: "Go sell some more drugs, sir. We know your background. I know who you are."
Then, on December 2, as Hayden drove away after a meeting at Riverside Church, the same two officers stopped him, searched him, and arrested him for possession of a penknife. "We know you," one of them said.
"These guys knew who I was," Hayden says, calling it "NYPD officers taking revenge on me. . . . It was clear retaliation."
Chris Woods, a 35-year-old security guard, happened to be walking by and witnessed the police stop Hayden. "He didn't say anything offensive or abusive to the officers, but that wasn't good enough for them," Woods says. "That he was talking with them seemed to make them more furious. The whole thing shouldn't even have been a criminal matter."
What probably should have been a minor incident became 48 hours in holding cells and a felony weapons charge against the activist. Hayden's arrest has also become something of a cause in Harlem.
Among other events, Hayden's allies organized a protest at the Manhattan Supreme Court on January 19, one of his court dates. The protest was attended by elected officials and activists. The board of the radio station WBAI, where Hayden was once a producer, passed a resolution in support of him.
In 2010, the NYPD, in a campaign touted by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as a key element in the war on crime, stopped more than 600,000 people throughout the city. From 2004 to 2009, police stopped 2.8 million people; the largest age group is males 15 to 19, following by males ages 20 to 24. Just 9 percent of the stops resulted in an arrest. And in 2011, the police were on pace for 686,000 stops—a new record.
In the 2010 Voice series "The NYPD Tapes," police supervisors in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant order cops to make a quota of one or two stops per tour. Police Officer Adil Polanco, who was assigned to a Bronx precinct, said similarly that there was a stop-and-frisk quota there. If those orders are typical for most precincts—and that appears to be the case from the tapes and Polanco's statements—then quotas are a key factor in fueling the rise in stops.
Even so, Kelly has said repeatedly that the stops keep people from carrying weapons, drugs, and other illicit items on the street. He said it again most recently in a December 11 affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit: "Stops serve as a deterrent to criminal activity."
He has been backed on this by Mayor Bloomberg, the New York Post and Daily News editorial pages, and commentators including the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald, who tied the stops to the crime decline and declared that the campaign "saves minorities' lives."
And yet the campaign has spawned ongoing opposition not only from elected officials and activists but also from regular New Yorkers. Last September, police stopped and handcuffed Councilman Jumaane Williams and an associate at Brooklyn's West Indian Day Parade.
Williams raised a fuss, which led police spokesman Paul Browne to claim that someone had punched a police officer during the incident. Williams called that claim a "bald-faced lie," and Browne hasn't uttered another word about it since.
But aside from public opinion, there's a major cost to the campaign in actual dollars. Over the past couple of years, the number of lawsuits filed by New Yorkers alleging improper stop-and-frisks has continued to grow. There might be some element of lawyers seeing a new area in the always-busy police-litigation business, but the rise also indicates a frustration among New Yorkers with the practice.
In the month of January alone, more than three dozen lawsuits alleging improper stop-and-frisks were filed, based on a Voice reading of the complaints. Extrapolated, that means that the city could be sued more than 400 times this year alone just on improper stops.
If each case settles for a minimum of $10,000, that's at least $4 million in cost to taxpayers, not including the cost to the police department in work hours assembling the documents and removing cops from the street to be deposed, and the cost to the corporation counsel in paying lawyers to defend those cases. One wonders how much money the city is willing to spend on this litigation just to stick with the police commissioner's campaign. (We asked the city law department this question but did not receive a response.)
The people who filed suit last month appear to come from all walks of life—an auto mechanic, two high school students, a commuter, a Transit Authority worker, a guy walking home with a bag full of dog food. In all of the cases, the criminal charges, if any, were dismissed.
Lyric Cabral The majority of New Yorkers targeted in stop-and-frisks are young black and Hispanic males. “Harlem is turning into an open-air prison, a minimum-security prison, and the people think it’s normal,” Hayden says. Lyric Cabral Hayden visits the 32nd Precinct in Harlem, where his arresting officers work.Take Francis Destouche, for example. Destouche, a 53-year-old auto mechanic with a clean record, was walking home in the Bronx in October 2011 when he was stopped for no apparent reason by police. They searched him, found nothing, and then accused him of "throwing something away." He was arrested, held for 20 hours, and missed his granddaughter's birth. The charges were dismissed. Destouche's lawyer, Paul Mills, alleges that the stop and the arrest were a result of the NYPD's "quota policy."
"This arrest cannot be explained by any of the common categories of false arrest," Mills says. "He's not even smoking a cigarette. So, if you eliminate the other possibilities, there's no other way to explain it other than it was for the quota."
Mills says Destouche decided to sue because missing his granddaughter's birth was significant. "There are people out there for whom at his advanced age, after a lifetime of respect for the police, to suddenly be abducted and jailed for 20 hours is very upsetting. It was a big deal to him."
Or consider the case of "M.S.," a 16-year-old Staten Island youth who says he was stopped for walking down the street, detained, and searched. His backpack was searched. He was physically restrained. Charges were eventually dismissed. The lawsuit goes on to quote at length from stop-and-frisk studies, which suggest a bias against young black and Hispanic males.
Scott Joyner was waiting for a bus in Brooklyn in June 2011 when he saw cops arresting two other people. An officer walked over and grabbed his arm but released him when he realized Joyner was just standing at the bus stop. Joyner walked to a pay phone to file a 311 complaint, and there he was arrested, he alleges, for trying to make a complaint. Charges were dismissed.
In January 2011, Jamie Jarrett was walking down a Brooklyn street when a van of cops rolled up and began searching him. They found no weapons or drugs. The officers refused to explain why they were placing him under arrest. The charge of marijuana sale was dismissed, but not before Jarrett spent 48 hours in custody.
Kenrick Gray, 32, of Staten Island, claims he was falsely stopped, searched, and detained twice in late 2010, the second time resulting in false arrest. His lawyer alleges racial profiling led to the stops.
Likewise, Jarrett Savage claims he was illegally stopped and frisked in October 2010 in Brooklyn. He was pushed against a wall, searched, and taken to the precinct, where he was strip-searched in front of another prisoner. The charges were dismissed eventually. "This is not an isolated incident," the lawsuit alleges. "The city is aware that many police officers are insufficiently trained to stop, detain, arrest, and strip-search individuals."
Ramon Morales says he was cleaning his car outside his sister's house on Cabrini Boulevard in Manhattan in August 2009 when cops stopped him for no apparent reason, accused him of drug possession, and searched him and the car. They found no drugs but charged him with a DWI, even though he wasn't driving. Eighteen court appearances and nearly two years later, the charges were dismissed. And Morales claims someone stole stuff from his car while it was in police custody.
Daryl George, a 36-year-old transit worker who had never been arrested, sued this month following a questionable stop in January 2011. George says he was talking with a friend about buying an iPod in the lobby of a Brooklyn building when police came in, ordered everyone against the wall, and searched them. George didn't have any contraband, though someone else in the lobby did. George was arrested anyway, and though the charges were dismissed and the case was sealed, he was suspended by the Transit Authority and lost five months' pay and benefits.
Kevin Adams claimed he was illegally searched and arrested in February 2010 in the lobby of the Brooklyn building where he lives with his mother. Later that day—the arrest took place at 10 a.m.—they released him because the district attorney declined to prosecute, but not before he was roughed up and strip-searched in a police van.
Gregory Pope also sued last month. He claims he was walking on Coney Island in August 2011 when he was jumped by four plainclothes officers. They searched him. He told them they couldn't just search him for no reason. After that, they arrested him and strip-searched him at the precinct. The police also took his car to the precinct, where they searched it and caused a range of damage. Pope was held in the precinct for a day and then, inexplicably, released without charges.
Schedrick Campbell was walking home with a bag of dog food in March 2011 in Brooklyn when three plainclothes officers grabbed him, accused him of swallowing drugs, and tackled him. Despite a strip search in the precinct and a series of forced and invasive medical tests over two days at Interfaith Hospital, no contraband was found. The hospital billed Campbell $9,500 for the concocted arrest.
And in April 2011, while Keenan Baskerville was walking down a Brooklyn street, he was stopped by police, accused of smoking marijuana, which he denied, and arrested. He was strip-searched, but no contraband was found. Baskerville also sued.
Monique Williams sued as well. She says that when she asked why she was stopped, a police sergeant said to her, "Because I can," a statement that doesn't appear in the NYPD's official stop-and-frisk policy.
On rare occasions, police officers can get into deep trouble for improper stops. Michael Daragjati stopped and frisked a man on Staten Island. The man complained about the stop, as the search found no contraband. Daragjati then arrested him and claimed the man had flailed his arms and kicked him.
That arrest was proved false, and Daragjati was indicted on federal civil rights violations. It didn't help that investigators caught him using racial slurs to boast about the arrest. Daragjati lost his job, pleaded guilty, and had to agree never to work as a cop again. He faces a year in jail and a $100,000 fine.
Chris Woods, the witness to Hayden's arrest, compared improper police stops here to the burgeoning scandal in East Haven, Connecticut, where the police chief had to resign after four officers were indicted for targeting, harassing, and even beating black and Latino males who threatened to report misconduct. The case grew out of a federal civil rights investigation.
"Officers are doing the same thing over here," Woods says. "It's a similar situation, but no one's doing anything about it."
Meanwhile, the endless saga that is Floyd v. City of New York continues to lumber through federal court. Floyd is a class-action lawsuit filed in 2008 by four citizens and the Center for Constitutional Rights that alleges that the NYPD's massive stop-and-frisk campaign routinely violates the civil rights of New Yorkers. (One citizen is the first named plaintiff, David Floyd, of the Bronx.)
In the latest legal maneuvering in nearly four years of litigation, the plaintiffs have asked the judge for "class certification," which would open the door for hundreds of thousands of additional plaintiffs. The city, on the other hand, is trying to block expert testimony from Jeffrey Fagan, a Columbia University professor who wrote a study of the strategy, by claiming that his use of the data was "misleading," ignored police crime-fighting innovations, "ran counter to accepted statistical practices," is "fatally flawed," "irrelevant and unreliable," and offers "speculation and conjecture."
Darius Charney, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, says the city has refused to engage in any substantive settlement talks, despite the fact the issue is "of great public concern," the judge in the case wrote. There were a couple of meetings before a magistrate judge, but Charney calls them "a complete waste of time."
Asked whether he thought the Bloomberg administration is seeking to delay an outcome until after the mayor leaves office in two years, Charney said: "I don't know what they are thinking. I do find it odd that given all the press on this, they have been completely unwilling to address these issues."
As for the NYPD's claim that the campaign acts as a deterrent to crime—the city uses the Orwellian term "pre-emptive policing"—even though it produces relatively few convictions, Charney says there is "no empirical proof" of that. "There's no study that shows that aggressive stop-and-frisk deters crime," he says. "And you have to have reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment. If they did 700,000 stops a year legally, we wouldn't have a complaint. But we contend the vast majority are illegal."
The Floyd case actually suffered a blow earlier this year, when U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that police had enough reasonable suspicion to frisk Floyd himself. Floyd had been stopped while entering his apartment building in February 2008.
Scheindlin based the decision on the city's claim that officers were acting on an ongoing pattern of burglaries in the area.
The CCR lawyers, however, went back and looked at the crime statistics for the preceding two months and found, instead, that there had been just one burglary in that area during the period. They filed a new motion based on that.
In November, Scheindlin granted the motion. She noted the new evidence was "deeply concerning to the court."
"Shockingly," Scheindlin wrote, police use the justification of "high-crime area" in stops even in low-crime areas. Fifty-five percent of stops are justified with that notation. The city justified its stop of Floyd with the high-crime notation.
"Plaintiffs have now raised severe doubts about the existence of that [burglary] pattern," Scheindlin wrote, adding that "it would be a miscarriage of justice" to deny Floyd's legal claim as a result.
Jazz Hayden, it certainly can be said, has lived in interesting times. He didn't really want to talk about the old days in a recent interview, but it's all chronicled in detail in crime journalist T.J. English's book The Savage City, which examines New York in the 1960s and 1970s. Hayden also appears in a documentary about Harlem drug kingpin Nicky Barnes titled Mr. Untouchable.
As a youth, Hayden supported himself by collecting bottles for pennies outside the Polo Grounds, shining shoes, and working for a barbershop, English writes. He became a hustler, first gambling in dice games and then running his own games. His uncle introduced him into the numbers game, and eventually, he was the person taking the bets.
English writes that in the late 1950s, Hayden, at age 16, was arrested for possession of 11 bags of heroin. He was sent to state prison for three years. He emerged from those abusive years embittered and angry, English writes.
Hayden fell into selling marijuana and heroin to survive. Meanwhile, the streets were filled with political discontent, personified in the Black Panther Party, which was at war with the police. But Hayden avoided the Panthers because survival was more important.
On September 27, 1968, a black male fired a rifle on two police officers sitting in a patrol car on 114th Street. The officers were wounded but survived. The police mobilized to catch the shooter.
Walking home with a friend, Hayden saw police around his apartment building. He had become a suspect in a high-profile crime that he had nothing to do with. He fled, until days later when the police caught up with him at a girlfriend's apartment. Hayden eventually learned that a person he knew had blamed the shooting on him under pressure from the police.
English notes that the shooter was described as about six foot four. Hayden is five foot five. Hayden was convicted anyway and sent to Attica state prison. Eighteen months later, the conviction was overturned, and Hayden was released, but he says he became a energetic critic of police tactics.
"In a time of war between the NYPD and the black liberation movement, [Hayden] was collateral damage," English writes.
The money-laundering conviction followed several years later, a result of Hayden's association with Barnes, and then the traffic dispute with a sanitation worker landed him in prison for 13 years. After he was released in 2000, he pursued several civil rights campaigns, the first being a class-action lawsuit over the fact that prisoners were denied the right to vote. In 2008, he founded Still Here Harlem Productions, a company that he envisioned offering an outlet for events the mainstream media ignored, and a website, allthingsharlem.com. Around then, he began filming stop-and-frisks. "It turned out to be the major issue in Harlem," he says.
Hayden has worked for various nonprofits since his release, done quite a bit of traveling to speak on civil rights issues, and is currently on Social Security. He has a wife of 40 years, eight children, 15 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He has been a hustler, a prisoner, but also a teacher and a scholar, even though as he says, he has been kicked out of every school he went to. He has had a summer fellowship at Harvard. "People tend to see you for one chapter in your life, but it's much more than that," he says.
One of the things Hayden does is videotape police officers performing stop-and-frisks. "I decided to tell them: 'I'm on your side. I'm here to observe you provide courtesy, professionalism, and respect,'" Hayden says. "What response could they make to that? Ray Kelly is the replaceable part. The person really upholding and sanctioning the policy is Bloomberg,"
Paolo Walker, a freelance videographer who has worked with Hayden for more than three years, says filming police "can be an intimidating experience."
A wealth of legal precedent and of course the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution makes photographing in public areas legal, but that memo apparently didn't make it to a lot of members of the NYPD.
"It is typical for the cops to give you a hard time and make threats to you to stop filming," he says. "Seeing a video of an incident and being able to put a human face on what's happening lets people see what's truly going on."
On one occasion, Walker says, officers filmed him filming them. An officer demanded his credentials and identification and insisted that he move along or else he would be arrested. In another incident, Walker says he was told "I'll get you" by an officer who told him to stop filming. Several times, Walker says cops pushed his camera and claimed they couldn't tell it was a camera.
One evening last summer, Hayden was out and came across a car stop in Harlem. Hayden videotaped the officers, who seem from the video to be fairly irritated that he was there. They not only shined their flashlights at him repeatedly, but they also told him they were aware of his prior arrests.
On December 2, Hayden left Riverside Church and was soon pulled over by the same two officers from the incident over the summer. He asked them why he was being stopped, and they eventually told him a brake light was not working. He provided his license and registration and was asked to step out of the car. Hayden claims one of the officers said: "Hey, we know you. . . . You're that murderer."
Hayden, unlike most people, was aware of his rights under the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure. He told the officers they could pat-frisk him, but they couldn't search him or his car. The officers told him to stand at the rear of the car, and they began searching it—illegally, Hayden alleges, because he hadn't consented to the search.
"They ignored me and went right into my car and began searching it," Hayden says.
The search yielded a penknife, and rather than confiscating it, the officers arrested Hayden on a felony weapons charge, and took him to the 32nd Precinct in upper Manhattan. He was held in the precinct for the next 48 hours, except for a visit to Harlem Hospital for a blood-pressure check.
In the criminal complaint, the police didn't mention the brake light. Instead, they claimed they saw him suspiciously "moving his hands on the console of his car." Hayden's supporters call that a fabrication. He also wasn't charged with any traffic violations.
"That summer, NY1 had posted some coverage of me," Hayden says. "Maybe the cops saw that, when they see me out there filming."
For now, as his case winds its way through the court system, Hayden says he'll continue videotaping police. He is also preparing to go down the same road as so many other New Yorkers and sue the NYPD for the improper stop and arrest. One of his lawyers is Sarah Kunstler, the daughter of another firebrand from the old days, civil rights attorney William Kunstler. His next court date is April 17.
Local Attorneys Seek Federal Leonard Peltier Documents
Attorney Michael Kuzma addresses a rally in front of Buffalo's federal courthouse on Saturday, February 4, the day after he filed a suit against the US Department of Justice for failure to answer his FOIA requests for information regarding the case of Leonard Peltier.
On May 13, 2004, Buffalo attorney Michael Kuzma filed an application with the US Department of Justice for all records in its possession relating to one Frank Black Horse. Kuzma represented Leonard Peltier, a federal prisoner since 1976, convicted of killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota on June 26, 1975, during a siege of a reservation ranch by federal agents.
Last Friday, on Kuzma’s behalf, local attorneys Peter A. Reese and Daire Brian Irwin filed a suit in the US District Court in Buffalo seeking an order directing the Justice Department to release the requested records of Black Horse. (Reese has represented both Artvoice and one of its staffers.)
Black Horse, whose real name is Frank Deluca and who is no Indian despite his alias, has been a resident of Canada since 1976 when, under federal indictment, he fled this country after shooting and wounding an FBI agent at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. He and Peltier were both arrested in Hinton, Alberta on February 6, 1976, but only Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was extradited to the States to stand trial. Despite the federal indictment against him, Black Horse has remained free across the border ever since. Peltier’s supporters, legal counsel and a number of independent observers have regarded this shadowy figure as someone who could shed light on what they regard as a concerted effort by federal authorities to railroad Peltier for crimes he didn’t commit. Hence, Kuzma’s long, dedicated, and tortuous attempt to obtain the Justice Department’s records on Black Horse.
The paper filed in federal court by Reese and Irwin included a list of events, turns and turnarounds in Kuzma’s unsuccessful over seven-and-a-half-year-long quest, accompanied by 21 copies of correspondence between him and either Justice or the FBI. Reese and Irwin’s suit alleges that Kuzma “has exhausted the applicable administrative remedies with respect to his FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request,” and that the government “has wrongfully withheld the requested records from the plaintiff.”
Very early in his tangled negotiation with the federal government, Kuzma agreed to accept only those “public-source” records in the government’s possession—such as news reports—and not seek any documents whose release could invade the privacy of third parties. These public-source documents, he explained in an interview Tuesday in his office, are very difficult or impossible to track down today because of their obscurity, age, and lack of availability on the Internet. The fact that the FBI collected them may be significant in explaining what its goals and methods were in this case.
And on November 14, 2008, after a number of delays and dead ends, an FBI official, David M. Hardy, wrote Kuzma informing him the bureau had “located approximately 927 pages which are potentially responsive to your request.” Hardy even provided an estimate of the cost to duplicate them: $82.70. But after Kuzma promptly remitted that sum, it was returned, with no explanation. In response to his puzzled inquiry, the bureau eventually told him that it had no public-source records it could share with him, after all. Despite several subsequent twists, including backing off from and then reinstating this position, Justice and the FBI have continued to deny Kuzma’s applications. (In a brief telephone interview, US Attorney William Hochul said he was unaware of the suit, but doubted that Justice would have any comment. Maureen Dempsey, a press representative at the FBI’s Buffalo office, said it knew of the action but could not make any statement about a pending civil suit.)
Peltier’s arrest, conviction, and imprisonment have long been regarded by many people as a product of the FBI’s illicit COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) that was secretly operated from the 1950s through the 1970s, all too often in violation of the law and federal court decisions. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was a targeted victim of the FBI’s spying and character assassination, as depicted in Clint Eastwood’s recent movie, J. Edgar. In his A People’s History of the United States, the late Boston University historian Howard Zinn described the government’s massive response with over 200 heavily armed federal agents when AIM occupied the reservation village of Wounded Knee in 1973 to protest the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ miserable treatment of Native Americans. This was the political backdrop to the charges against Peltier.
Kuzma said that “the FBI set the wheels in motion that got its agents killed.” It had apparently infiltrated AIM with informants, including the bogus and violent Black Horse. Kuzma cites a document, previously obtained by Peltier’s defense, from January 15, 1976, in which Deputy Director General (Ops) M. S. Sexsmith of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RMCP) wrote to a colleague about Black Horse’s surreptitious provision of information from inside AIM.
Kuzma says it’s his hope that a federal magistrate judge will review the withheld material and say it should be released. Under FOIA, he said, “disclosure, not secrecy, is the focus.”
Tuesday, one of Kuzma’s lawyers, Irwin, said his goal is “to discover why it’s so important to the government to keep [Peltier] in prison,” and keep their documents secret. “What are they hiding?”
Nelson Mandela and 55 members of the US Congress, among others, have called for Peltier’s release.
Punishment: A Failed Social Experiment
Featuring:
PROFESSOR JOE SIM, Criminologist - Liverpool John Moores University
DR. BOB JOHNSON, Prison Psychiatrist - Special Unit in HMP Parkhurst
JOE BLACK, Prison Campaigner - Campaign Against Prison Slavery
DR. DAVID SCOTT, Criminologist - University of Central Lancashire
Synopsis:
PUNISHMENT: A FAILED SOCIAL EXPERIMENT provides a detailed, critical analysis of the
current legal and justice system generally in operation across the planet whilst also
providing potential solutions which work on preventing crime and creating a much more
socially sustainable society.
The documentary film consists of interviews with various individuals; all of whom
provide information on where we are going wrong when we treat offenders, and what we
could head towards in regards to the solutions available.
It must be recognised that in order for change to occur in the system of punishment and 'justice', wider societal and cultural issues need to be addressed, as this documentary film recognises that there are inherent flaws in our current social system.
Although most sources of information originate from the United Kingdom, it is
reasonable to state that the topics examined will apply to many other nations.
Punishment: A Failed Social Experiment is an independent film production and that has
just been released online for free download and distribution.
View at: http://newfuturemedia.net/
