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An American Black Site

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137 pointswhack64 comments

> family members and attorneys in touch with SAMs prisoners can be prosecuted and incarcerated for repeating anything the inmate told them

This is interesting and I'd be very curious to know what the courts have made of this kind of prior restraint. I'm not skeptical that threats of this nature have been made, but I am skeptical that such a prosecution could actually be brought- under what statute? Lawyers may be gagged somewhat, as an officer of the court, but a family member seems like a real stretch.

Edit to add: here's a simple explainer on SAMs and what they do: https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/10/SA...

> Prisoners under SAMs are prohibited from communicating with anyone except a few pre-approved individuals – their attorneys and immediate family members – and SAMs prohibit those individuals from repeating the prisoner’s words to anyone else.

I am still awfully curious as to what possible statutory authority the DoJ could have to regulate the speech of people who aren't actually incarcerated.

I imagine that it isn't actually prior restraint in the classic sense, but instead in the form of an agreement that the lawyers and family members have to sign before talking to the prisoners in question.

Yes, I suspect that they're non-disclosure agreements. So violating them puts one in contempt of court. And punishments for contempt are whatever judges say they are.

See, that would make a least some sense. But apparently "The U.S. Attorney General has sole discretion to impose SAMs". With court imposed gag orders there's a court order from a judge. These things seem to be administrative decisions about detention conditions (the same way prisons can regulate the books prisoners can have, etc). But if so, they wouldn't ordinarily regulate the speech of people not actually in jail. I think the worst they'd be able to do is ban that person from visiting again, not actually prosecute them. How can you be in contempt of court if SAMs are at the sole discretion of the AG?

I guess that the US AG has that power. Or maybe some tame judges. I suppose that it could go to the Supreme Court.

However, many cases have been quashed, based on national security grounds. For criminal cases, charges against suspects have been dropped. But about SAMs, that would likely leave the status unchanged. IANAL, though.

This is mortifying and humiliating. It makes me ashamed to be associated(by being a citizen and armed services veteran) with the country. I suppose I could speak out and try to change things...but I fear that doing so would ensure a similar fate for myself; rotting away in a secret prison, while my family is threatened with prosecution if they talk about it.

It's all happy times here in the USA, anyone that will tell you otherwise has already been imprisoned and/or re-educated.

Do you have any proof that:

1.) The US is imprisoning people who speak out against bad things happening in the US? 2.) Any proof of citizens being forced into re-education facilities?

Who in a US prison is there for speaking out and trying to change things? Name one.

Manning is currently in prison for refusing the illegal attempt to abuse a grand jury to make her testify when the grand jury has already made a charge and should have no further role.

Why are western nations retreating from any semblance of the moral high ground?

Because they were used to eating their cake and having it too and they chose to keep acting evil when transparency made them unable to hide as well.

We aren't retreating from anything, it's just that in this political climate it's hard to continue to scream about moral high ground when the reality always seems to come crashing through.

It’s just exposure and acceptance (or lack thereof).

Fifty years ago we (the US) were carpet bombing neutral countries as part of a bloody war to prop up a brutal dictatorship.

Around the same time, we were shooting protestors and systematically shutting minorities out of civic involvement.

A couple of decades before that, we put a hundred thousand innocent civilians in concentration camps because of their ancestry.

Less than a century before that, “the land of the free” had laws allowing people to buy and sell other people. And slavery was never really ended: the 13th Amendment has a big fat exception for prisoners, which we’ve taken advantage of ever since.

What’s different now is that we find out what’s happening more quickly and in a way that makes more people take notice.

I don't know about "western nations" generally, but "American exceptionalism" is well known.

And about TFA, millions of prisoners, mostly male and mostly black, suffer in arguably worse conditions. Especially, I gather from a recently posted article, prisoners in county jails.

Why is western news media intentionally muddying the waters of public perception by comparing an American blacksite to everything in a sensationalist manner?

Let's save, "Nazi" and "Guantanamo" for the men who did the deeds.

$$$$

Setting aside this specific situation. Let's say you run a prison, and an inmate goes on a "hunger strike" for a reason that's important to them. What should the prison operators do? Force feed the inmate, negotiate, give into their demands, or let them die? Let's say you try to negotiate, but the inmate is making unreasonable demands or you are not willing to meet their demands, then what?

People should be able to control their bodies. If you don't want to eat. Nobody should force feed you.

I'm not trying to muddy the waters on this issue or take a consequentialist perspective, but how is this materially different from someone rejecting oxygen?

The moral response seems to be to intervene rather than let someone commit suicide, regardless of how long it takes.

I'm firmly in the "you own your body" camp.

But we have to admit that ok, hanging yourself in your cell should be fine, because of this logic.

The reason it's not is political: looks a lot better to have somebody run a story "those horrible prisons are making prisoners eat!" than it is "two-hundred inmates supposedly hung themselves last year because they had the right to"

This is a political battle the prisoner is having with the jail: I am unhappy and ready to die. Make my life just a tiny bit more bearable or I will die in a way that makes you look bad.

I could go into a long rant about all the problems of the American system of jurisprudence. There are tons. We've lost our way on the reasons for prisons and the purpose of incarceration, amongst a lot of other related matters. I still think these folks should have absolute control over their bodies. If it looks bad? Well, it looks bad for a very good reason.

Political systems exist for political reasons. People forget that and ascribe all sorts of things to these systems they never deserved even when they were working well. We need a lot of reform. I wish these folks the best of luck.

Refusing food is less violent. Just like people have the right to refuse refuse to take medicine, refuse medical treatments etc, they should be able to refuse food.

They should be allowed to die. This is the reasonable position. Societal reaction to such action may change administrative policy, but it would do so through entirely proper political channels. The job of the civil servant is to implement policy and advise, not to determine or defend it from changes made in a proper fashion.

To everyone saying to let them die, then where is the punishment? Most terrorists would rather and, in fact, intend to die during their attacks. If you let them die, not only are you giving them what they want, but then there is no deterrent to carrying out suicide missions.

I don't see any reason to believe that the fear of prison should they fail to die has ever, or will ever, deter even a single person from carrying out a suicide mission.

The lack of deterrent effect doesn’t mean that society’s desire for punishment vanishes. If there was a treatment that could make Osama Bin Laden a perfectly normal accountant in Des Moines I would not advocate for it compared to a trial and execution.

C/f this vindictive attitude with how the Norwegians have treated Brivik. He has been gently and humanly turned into a joke when he could have been a martyr...

>...but then there is no deterrent...

The deterrent premise is as old as at least the Inquisition (12th century) and has worked out quite well to reduce crime and recidivism rates in the world to nigh zero levels in the centuries since... /s

You don't have a deterrent to begin with.

Crazy how there are people out there that can live with performing these acts, or "reviewing" them even. How many thousands before they are completely desensitized?

The "Banality of Evil" is a useful idea when trying to understand how the Nazis did what they did. It's wrong to think that it was anyone other than 'normal' human beings who have committed atrocities through the ages.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

I've never been able to bring myself to read the book.

can someone speak to the level of credibility of this site/organization? I have never heard of them before.

Why isn't there more of a highlight on Salameh's actual charges. This is grossly glossed over especially when understanding what you have to do to land oneself in a blacksite to begin with.

"It’s for this reason that I didn’t ask Salameh to tell me about his crimes. The harm he caused should not be forgotten, but it must be held apart. Under international law, the right to be free from torture is inalienable and absolute—and that protects all of us."

It's pretty sinister that your first response is not to address the torture but "he must be guilty of something". The US has done plenty to demonstrate it will do far worse without wrongdoing by the victim.

yeah, tell that to the black teenagers dragged to Homan Square in Chicago

which would be exactly why I would want to know the charge's

Secret prisons for citizens in 2019 Chicago? Shocking to hear about, America is truly lost.

What do we do when we hear about citizen torture administered by the state? I expect the news coming out will only get worse from here.

> what you have to do to land oneself in a blacksite to begin with

Yes, like going on vacation to visit relatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar

The author really glossed over the reasons for the communications ban imposed on the terrorist prisoner - multiple people he spoke with ended up committing terrorist acts. Seems like a good enough reason to completely cut him off. In addition, the author really stretches when she complains that they brought in a gallon of liquid to feed him. If you’ve tried to feed a prisoner multiple times and you know they’re going to deliberately vomit it up, of course you’ll bring extra. There’s enough going on here where the author doesn’t need to add in things that actually seem logical, because now I’m questioning everything she wrote and how much of it was exaggerated.

Force feeding is arguably a form of torture.

https://www.apnews.com/e0941d7d1b0d413b9d9a0b792c34dd26

Arguably. But if you let the prisoner die while in your custody, a lot more people are going to be screaming about how evil you are to allow that, and how it's your fault that they died because you didn't protect them, and it's even more your fault because you probably wanted them dead and at least encouraged it to happen, and and and...

Maybe we should house these prisoners under conditions where they don’t become suicidal, then.

While I agree with humane treatment of prisoners, that's a very slippery argument. Every prison is technically inhumane enough to send some people to attempt suicide.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Well, what's your alternative? The death penalty? Release them?

Make your prisons humane, don’t force-feed anyone, and accept the condemnation that occurs when one of your prisoners decides to starve himself to death anyway.

That's fair. But you aren't the one I was asking. I get the impression that that wasn't danharaj's alternative.

I don’t see how “Makes you think, doesn't it?” would imply anything more than the comment it was in response to.

I read it as implying that all prisons are inherently inhumane, and therefore that nobody should be in them. But that's one of the problem with drive-by questions like that - you can't tell for sure what their actual point is.

If prisons get too humane shareholders don't make as much profit, that's the real problem.

It’s not slippery at all. Life isn’t fair. Keeping prisoners means you’re responsible for them, and that means that sometimes you’re going to be responsible for problems. There doesn’t have to be a way out of this.

The restrictions placed upon the fellow are more “capricious” in the words of the judge than necessary. Perhaps all his communications need to be read. I somehow doubt that prevention of communications by his lawyers is an important part of counter-terrorism, or that it can take more than a day or two to make sure that correspondence does not promote terrorism.

And I fail to see why we should force-feed a prisoner in the first place, which is the main problem.

If he’s directing terrorist attacks from jail maybe the smarter move is to not force feed him.

What anti-terrorist point is there in restricting his reading material? In what universe does 'Audacity of Hope' or any book pose a national security threat in the hands of a man who spends all but a few hours a day completely alone?

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