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9/11 detainees 'abused' - Koran Kicking in NYC After 9/11

SA | 16.08.2005 14:22 | Repression | World

- While an inmate was at prayer, an assistant warden allegedly entered his cell and ordered a corrections officer to confiscate his prayer rug and Qur'an and to dispose of the items in a garbage incinerator.

- A Bureau of Prisons inmate alleged that a corrections officer ordered him to drop his Qur'an on the floor outside his cell and then kicked the Qur'an and walked away.

Washington - The justice department's inspector general says a federal detention centre in New York City failed to turn over hundreds of videotapes to investigators probing the treatment of detainees taken into custody after the September 11 attacks.

The United States Bureau of Prisons discovered the tapes in February, 14 months after the IG found staff members had abused some detainees at the Metropolitan Detention Centre.

Some tapes from the centre contain conversations between lawyers and their clients, IG Glenn Fine said on Monday in a report to Congress. Fine is looking into the detention centre's failure to produce the tapes during his investigation.

False promises of confidentiality

Lawyers for the Legal Aid society are suing detention centre officers for secretly videotaping their conversations at the centre. The lawyers say they were assured by the prison that the attorneys' conversations with their clients were not being taped, even though video cameras were on the walls.

An attorney in the lawsuit, Nelson A Boxer, said he was unaware that hundreds of videotapes had been discovered in February. Boxer is a partner at the law firm of Alston & Bird, who is representing attorneys from the Legal Aid society. The society provides legal services to suspects too poor to pay for them.

Detainees abused

Evidence from the hundreds of tapes was incorporated into the Bureau of Prisons' disciplinary review of the staff's treatment of detainees.

The Bureau of Prisons has sustained many of the IG's findings that some staff members abused some of the detainees there, the IG said.

Among complaints the IG is looking into at federal prisons regarding people taken into custody after the September 11 2001, attacks:

- While an inmate was at prayer, an assistant warden allegedly entered his cell and ordered a corrections officer to confiscate his prayer rug and Qur'an and to dispose of the items in a garbage incinerator.

- A Bureau of Prisons inmate alleged that a corrections officer ordered him to drop his Qur'an on the floor outside his cell and then kicked the Qur'an and walked away.

SA

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LIAR

16.08.2005 21:05

Actually, that is not true. The Quran is simply a holy book. It wasn't until the CIA created textbooks manipulating Islam and connecting it to militancy, and delivered them to children in Afghanistan, that we began to see "Islamic Extremism".

Torture Is A US Tool Of Intimidation