THE POLITICIZATION OF AMERICA'S PRISONS: Sharing news yields solitary confinement...
Sidney,
Thanks for your eloquently stated views. I agree with you. And I received an interesting email yesterday on a very chilling development within our Federal prison system. This is from the School of the America's Watch organization:
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The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) recently placed a 59 year old former Air Force veteran and retired educator, William Combs, who is serving a 3 month misdemeanor sentence for non-violent civil disobedience trespass at the School of the Americas/WHISC at Fort Benning, Georgia, in solitary confinement for 8 days. Combs was advised this action was taken because he was mailed articles from the New York Times, Readers' Digest, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, the English newspaper The Guardian, and a newsletter from SOA Watch that is distributed to thousands of people, and then showed the public information to other inmates.
According to Combs' attorney Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, Combs was taken in handcuffs and chains, with only the clothes on his back, from the minimum security BOP facility at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to solitary confinement in the Santa Rosa County Jail on May 27th. While in solitary confinement Combs was not allowed to speak with his lawyer, receive any visitors or mail, make any phone calls, and was locked down by himself 24 hours a day. He was allowed outside 2 times for one hour, and was allowed out of his cell to shower and clean his cell three times in the 8 days.
When Quigley found out on Sunday June 1, 2003 that Combs had been transferred and was being held in solitary confinement he repeatedly called the local jail and called and faxed the federal prison at Eglin and the BOP to investigate. Quigley was told by BOP officials at Eglin that Combs was "under investigation by the FBI" on charges which would not be disclosed. Quigley was further advised by Eglin BOP officials that Combs would be allowed no mail, visitor or phone privileges, even with his attorney until the BOP "heard back from the FBI." Combs was released on Tuesday June 3, 2003 into the general population at Santa Rosa County Jail. Combs is scheduled to be released from prison on July 4, 2003.
Combs was later told informally by a BOP official that he was placed in solitary for "receiving and distributing political literature." According to Quigley, friends of Combs sent him anti-war and other social justice articles from the New York Times, Readers' Digest, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, the English newspaper The Guardian, and a newsletter from SOA Watch that is distributed to thousands of people. Combs read these articles and showed them to other prisoners and even mailed some information to a student in Canada who wanted more information about the School of the Americas.
No FBI agent ever came to interview Combs nor did any investigator from any federal, state, or local governmental agency. To the present, despite numerous requests, no one at the BOP has ever told Combs or Quigley why he was placed in solitary confinement or why he was not allowed to contact his attorney or use the phone or send or receive mail or see visitors.
William "Bud" Combs, 59 year old former Air Force veteran and retired teacher, is from Tallahassee, FL. This
misdemeanor is his first criminal offense ever. On January 27, 2003 he plead guilty to the non-violent misdemeanor of trespass onto a military reservation in US District Court in Columbus GA and was sentenced to 90 days in federal prison. Combs was charged with a violation of 18 USC 1382, trespass onto Fort Benning, GA on November 17, 2002 in connection with the annual protest of thousands of people against the School of the Americas (now called WHISC - Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation) located on the grounds of Fort Benning, GA. Eighty-six people were arrested in that demonstration with fifty one
receiving federal prison terms of up to six months and fines up to $2500. The group of the 86 included students, teachers, retirees, catholic sisters, counselors, nurses, homemakers, missionaries, volunteers, social workers and therapists, and also includes an accountant, an engineer, an airline captain, two farmers, an artist, a lawyer, a priest, a pastor, a bricklayer, a salesperson, a newspaper deliverer, a printing manager, and a paralegal. They were from all over the country and included 35 people under twenty-five years of age and 28 over fifty. Fifty-one received federal prison sentences. Over forty of the group
are serving time in federal prison right now.
In Fall 2002, Amnesty International USA called for the closure of the School of the Americas/WHISC and an investigation into its operations. See Unmatched Power, Unmet Principles: The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces. Amnesty International USA, Fall 2002. amnestyusa.org
More information about those in prison and the campaign to close the School of the Americas/WHISC can be found on the
web site of the School of the Americas Watch
soaw.org |
