US federal prisons for the past three years have housed special units filled disproportionately with Muslim inmates whose every communication with the outside world is strictly monitored.
Known as “Guantanamo North,” the so-called Communication Management Units (CMU) were secretly opened in 2007 in maximum security prisons in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois and currently have 71 prisoners, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said.
The US public radio network, NPR, recently published the names, nationalities and reasons for incarceration of 86 of more than 100 detainees who have passed through them, information never before disclosed by the bureau.
NPR found that a number of detainees were convicted of terrorism offenses, but mixed in with them were white supremacists and common criminals.
The CMU’s are designed to severely limit detainees’ contacts with the outside world, to prevent them from organizing crimes or settling accounts from behind bars, -harassing their victims or proselytizing when there is a risk of religious radicalization.
The aim is to “ensure the safe, secure and orderly running of BOP facilities, and to protect the public,” the bureau said in documents.
However, while Muslims account for 6 percent of the inmate population in federal prisons as a whole, in the CMUs “somewhere between 65 and 72 percent of the population is Muslim,” said Alexis Agathocleous, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“So, that’s a tenfold over representation. That obviously raises concerns about religious profiling,” he said.
Agathocleous represents five current and former inmates of CMU’s who are suing to challenge their incarceration in units “cut off from the outside world.”
He said some of his clients have never been convicted of terrorist offenses, nor committed any disciplinary infractions or broken the rules on communication at other prisons where they have been held.
Their complaint says that of the first 17 prisoners transferred to the Terre Haute CMU, 15 were Muslim.
“The population grew quickly. By March 2007, CMU prisoners reported that there were 48 prisoners in Terre Haute CMU and 37 were Muslim.
“In the last several years, subsequent to media scrutiny of defendants’ targeting of Muslims, more non-Muslims have been moved to the CMU. Guards on the units have referred to these non-Muslims prisoners as balancers,” it said.
Asked about the proportion of Muslims in the CMU populations, Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Tracy Billingsley said she could not provide the statistic because “it is irrelevant.”
Besides Muslims, Agathocleous said there was “a pattern of people with unpopular political beliefs being designated to the CMU.”
He said one of his clients was an environmental activist involved in pressing prisoners’ rights. Others appear to have been transferred to the unit as punishment, such as a former inmate who landed in the CMU after filing a complaint against the penitentiary system.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS