Tag: prison

Ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy to be released from prison less than 3 weeks into 5-year sentence

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy will be released from prison and placed under judicial supervision, a Paris appeals court ruled Monday, less than three weeks after he began serving a five-year sentence over a scheme to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya.

Sarkozy, 70, was expected to leave Paris’ La Santé prison in the afternoon.

He will be banned from leaving the French territory and from being in touch with key people including co-defendants and witnesses in the case, the court said. An appeals trial is expected to take place later, possibly in the spring.

Sarkozy became the first former French head of state in modern times to be sent behind bars after his conviction on Sept. 25. He denies wrongdoing. He was jailed on Oct. 21 pending appeal but immediately filed for early release.

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Judge Orders Bureau of Prisons to Provide Sex Change Surgery to Transgender Pedophile Inmate

A federal judge has ruled that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) must provide sex change procedures to a convicted pedophile who recently began identifying as transgender.

Brian Buckingham, 47, is serving more than 21 years in prison for sexually abusing his 10-year-old son and producing child sex abuse images. Shortly before sentencing, Buckingham began identifying as “Nani Love” and claimed to be female, Reduxx reported. 

In court filings, Buckingham claimed that being unable to access previously provided “gender-affirming” treatments, like hormone therapy, had worsened his depression and suicidal thoughts, The Post Millennial reported. Attorneys for Buckingham argued the sex change procedures were “medically necessary” to treat gender dysphoria and that denying Buckingham access to them is a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights.

Magistrate Judge David Christel ruled in September that Buckingham is “likely to succeed” on his claim that the BOP’s denial of sex change procedures is cruel and unusual punishment. In his ruling, Christel cited evidence that the BOP first acknowledged Buckingham’s requests for sex change procedures but then “discontinued them without reason.” 

Christel’s recommendation was ultimately adopted by U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez who ordered the BOP to provide consultations to Buckingham within 30 days for laser hair removal, facial feminization surgery, and voice therapy. 

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Prosecutor Who Exposed Sde Teiman Rape Video Missing After Netanyahu Calls It ‘Israel’s Most Dangerous Attack’

Israeli police have launched a search for outgoing military prosecutor Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, who admitted leaking a video showing Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian hostage at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility in the occupied Negev.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, Yerushalmi has been missing for several hours. Police found her car abandoned near a Tel Aviv beach early Sunday morning. Israel Hayom reported that she left a farewell letter inside the vehicle, while Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, said she also left a suicide note at her home.

A senior police source told Haaretz there are serious concerns for her life.

The disappearance comes a few hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the video leak as “the most dangerous propaganda attack in Israel’s history.”

Speaking at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the footage caused “massive damage to Israel’s image, its army, and its soldiers.” He called for an independent investigation into the leak, which has deeply shaken Israel’s political and military establishment.

The leaked video shows Israeli soldiers torturing and raping a Palestinian hostage at the Sde Teiman base, often referred to by Israeli activists as a “human slaughterhouse.” The recording, from July 2024, spread widely online, sparking outrage abroad but mainly panic within Israel’s leadership over reputational damage and the risk of international prosecution.

Following the leak, right-wing activists, including several Israeli ministers, stormed the base to show support for the soldiers, who committed the assault, denouncing their arrest and framing them as heroes.

A Haaretz investigation published Sunday revealed that Yerushalmi, who was dismissed last week by Defense Minister Israel Katz, had for months avoided launching probes into incidents in Gaza that could constitute war crimes.

Military correspondent Yaniv Kubovich reported that Yerushalmi deliberately froze several sensitive cases due to threats and incitement from Israel’s far-right circles following her involvement in the Sde Teiman affair.

“She felt threatened and stopped making decisions out of fear of personal attacks,” a senior army source told the paper.

Among the cases she ignored was the killing of seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in Deir al-Balah in April 2024. An internal field investigation found that the strike violated operational orders, but Yerushalmi chose not to refer it to military police.

A reserve officer told Haaretz that Yerushalmi also refused to open investigations into the killing of 15 medical staff members in Gaza in March 2024, despite documented evidence and calls from inquiry committees.

According to sources quoted by Haaretz, Yerushalmi had received direct threats at her home and workplace.

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Supreme Court STRIKES DOWN mandatory jail for child exploitation

Reaction has been swift and angry after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the one-year mandatory minimum sentence for possessing or accessing child-sexual-abuse material. In a narrow 5-4 decision, the court ruled the punishment unconstitutional, calling it cruel and unusual under the Charter.

Conservative justice critic Larry Brock called the decision “a disgusting and cruel insult to victims,” warning it will weaken deterrence for child-sex offenders and further erode confidence in the justice system. Critics say the ruling reflects a court increasingly out of touch with public safety concerns.

Also, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms president John Carpay joins Marc Patrone to warn that Canada’s endorsement of the World Health Organization’s new pandemic regulations hands power to unelected foreign officials and undermines national sovereignty. Carpay also sounds the alarm over Ottawa’s latest surveillance and censorship bills, calling them “a roadmap to a police state by Christmas.”

Plus, the Bank of Canada confirms the country is in recession. Tiff Macklem warns of falling living standards, and Prime Minister Mark Carney returns from South Korea empty-handed after failing to secure any progress on China’s trade tariffs.

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Trump admin punishing inmates for protesting Epstein accomplice’s ‘VIP treatment’: report

President Donald Trump’s administration is now reportedly coming down hard on federal inmates for speaking out against the DOJ’s apparent soft treatment of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

That’s according to CNN, which reported Friday that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee — is now demanding answers from the warden at Maxwell’s minimum security prison about what he alleges is “VIP treatment” for deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s chief accomplice. CNN host Jim Sciutto said Raskin is also questioning Maxwell getting “mysterious visitors, meal delivery and other special perks” and that the DOJ has “retaliated against inmates who dared to speak out about her fawning preferential treatment.”

Elie Honig, a legal analyst for the network, told Scuitto that while he’s less concerned with meal deliveries and meetings with visitors, the major red flag in Raskin’s letter is the allegation that inmates have been punished for drawing attention to Maxwell’s treatment.

“Apparently there are other inmates in this facility, other female inmates who have spoken out about preferential treatment to Ghislaine Maxwell and are now being punished,” Honig said. “Representative Raskin points out one particular inmate who appears to have been kicked out of a training program and moved to a higher security prison. That is a major problem, if that’s happening as retaliation.”

Honig went on to remind viewers that Maxwell shouldn’t even be at the Bryan, Texas prison — where she was moved earlier this year after a two-day meeting with Deputy Attorney General (and Trump’s former personal attorney) Todd Blanche — due to Bureau of Prisons rules. Facilities like Bryan are typically only for white-collar offenses, whereas violent offenders like those convicted of sex crimes have to serve their sentences in more restrictive conditions.

“That takes a waiver. Somebody within the Justice Department … has to specifically approve that, say, ‘I waive the normal course of proceedings and I’m okay with Ghislaine Maxwell being moved to a lower security prison,'” Honig said. “To this day, we don’t know who actually authorized that. And we’ve not gotten answers from DOJ about that.”

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Rosie O’Donnell’s Daughter Sentenced to Prison amid Sexual Assault Allegations

Rosie O’Donnell’s daughter is facing time behind bars.

According to documents obtained by Us Weekly, O’Donnell’s daughter Chelsea was sentenced to prison last week after violating her terms of probation.

A judge in Wisconsin ruled that the 28-year-old had violated her probation due to sexual assault allegations and had also failed to show adequate progress in her drug treatment program.

“The facts surrounding this request have been staffed with the Marinette County Treatment Drug Court Team and have been deemed sufficient grounds to warrant termination from the Marinette County Treatment Drug Court Program,” the filing read.

Chelsea will reportedly serve her sentence at Taycheedah Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison in Wisconsin.

However, the length of her sentence has not yet been publicly disclosed.

Her mother took to Instagram to ask people to pray for her troubled daughter.

“My child chelsea belle – before addiction took over her life – i loved her then i love her now as she faces a scary future- prayers welcomed,” the actress wrote.

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Mamdani Vows To Shut Down Rikers Island, Release Almost 8K Criminals

If New York City voters elect Muslim democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor, they will come to appreciate H.L. Mencken’s maxim that “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

The latest on the far-far-far left radical goes well beyond raising taxes on whites, providing free day care and bus transportation, and, famously, “seizing the means of production.”

Last night, during the final mayoral debate against independent candidate and former Governor Andrew Cuomo and radio talker and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, Mamdani vowed again to shut down the Rikers Island prison facility in 2027, as city law requires. The problem: Other jails cannot be built before the deadline.

Result: Almost 8,000 dangerous criminals would be loosed upon the city. Not that Mamdani would care. Aside from the other communist ideas he espouses, he would also abolish jails and prisons.

Rikers Island is a 413-acre property with 12 facilities, almost all the city’s jails. In 2019, the city passed a law to close the facility and replace it with jails in four of the city’s five boroughs. That was a pipe dream, and now, the deadline for shuttering Rikers looms.

Answering a debate moderator’s question about it, Cuomo said “you cannot close Rikers in 2027 because there’s no place to put the people unless you’re going to release 7,000 people.” Noting that Mamdani would release them, Cuomo added that “I’m not going to release 7,000 criminals into New York.”

Releasing the criminals is the Democratic Socialists’, and therefore Mamdani’s, policy, Cuomo said. The former Empire State governor would build new jails on the island.

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Wall Street Journal Weeps for Murderers Trump Sent to Supermax

Shortly before he left office, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 convicted murderers. Those convicts, all on death row, were now facing life behind bars.

Two of those convicts, Norris Holder and Billie Allen, killed bank guard and former police officer Richard Heflin in a 1997 bank robbery. Other family members of murder victims were outraged and hurt by Biden’s move.

Alex Snell, the brother of Amanda Snell, was one of those people. Amanda, 20, was strangled by Jorge Avila-Torrez in 2009. “I’d rather see it go back to the way it was, where he was sentenced to death,” Snell said. “He should have gotten that penalty.”

President Biden said he commuted the sentences (save for three convicted of terrorism or hate crimes) because he had a change of heart on the death penalty, and the Wall Street Journal says he found it “needlessly cruel, as well as impossible to administer fairly.”

It seems the Wall Street Journal believes those commutations somehow absolve the convicted murderers from facing consequences for their actions, and they’re appalled that President Trump hasn’t made their lives behind bars easier.

Here’s more:

Among the last actions by former President Joe Biden before leaving the Oval Office was commuting the death sentences of 37 convicted murderers.

Hours after President Trump took over, he ordered the life sentences of these men be made, in effect, a living hell.

With that guidance, officials canceled plans to transfer most of the inmates to mainline prisons. Instead, Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general at the time, ordered all but a handful requiring specialized medical treatment be housed in the U.S. Penitentiary at Florence, Colo., the harshest institution in the federal system.

Inmates at the Colorado prison—intended for the nation’s most violent—typically spend 23 hours a day alone in their cells. At a meeting in May with Attorney General Pam Bondi for families of loved ones killed by the 37 convicts, some officials said they wished conditions at the prison, known as ADX, were even worse.

Aaron Reitz, a former assistant attorney general, held a roundtable with victims’ families. “If you’re not going to be killed lawfully at the hands of the state, well, your prison sentence is going to be hard as hell,” Reitz said in an interview.

There is little sympathy for these convicts outside of the Wall Street Journal editorial room.

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Ghislaine Maxwell’s Cushy Minimum-Security Stay Sparks Uproar

On a sweltering mid-August weekend, hundreds of women at Federal Prison Camp Bryan were locked in their dorms, missing family time and fresh air. All except one: Ghislaine Maxwell. The 63-year-old Jeffrey Epstein confidante, convicted for helping him abuse underage teens, held a quiet meeting with several visitors inside the prison chapel while the rest of the camp was on ice, according to a new report from the WSJ, citing people familiar with the matter.

Maxwell had landed at the minimum-security Texas facility less than three weeks earlier, after a sudden transfer from a higher-security prison in Tallahassee. That move alone raised eyebrows: Bureau of Prisons policy generally keeps sex offenders out of camps without a special waiver. Her defense has said she faced “serious danger” in Florida; the bureau won’t say how many waivers like this exist – or why Maxwell got one.

The ripple effects inside Bryan were immediate. Inmates say the usually relaxed camp tightened the screws: more frequent lockdowns, armed guards on site, and SORT tactical teams posted at the gates. Black tarps went back up on the fence line. Guards delivered meals to Maxwell’s room, escorted her for late-night workouts, and let her shower after others were confined. Meanwhile, resentment simmered. Some inmates called her a “chomo,” prison slang for child molester. The warden, sources said, warned that threats or media chatter would earn a fast ticket to a harsher joint.

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100+ unqualified immigrants were hired as corrections officers in Washington jails, whistleblower claims

An anonymous whistleblower claimed that a Washington corrections department illegally hired unqualified immigrants as corrections officers.

According to Fox News Digital, the individual wrote to the Criminal Justice Training Commission in August, stating that the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention violated a state statute that requires all peace officers and corrections officers to be United States citizens, lawful permanent residents, or recipients of deferred action for childhood arrivals.

“It has come to my attention, that, over the past several years, the King County DAJD has knowingly hired individuals as corrections officers who do not meet these legal requirements,” the letter to the commission read.

The whistleblower claimed that in some instances, individuals with temporary work visas or expired work authorization were hired to guard detention centers.

“This practice not only undermines the integrity of Washington’s criminal justice system but also presents significant legal and security concerns,” the whistleblower remarked, urging the commission to investigate the claims promptly.

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