Tag: torture

Six former Mississippi cops known as ‘The Goon Squad’ plead guilty to torturing and abusing two black men during raid on their home

Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers have pleaded guilty to charges accusing them of torturing and abusing two black men during a raid.

Members of the self-called ‘Goon Squad’ each carried a coin with the name emblazoned on one side and the other with Rankin County Sheriff’s Office’s badge. 

Lieutenant Jeffrey Middleton appeared to be the ringleader of the group, with his coin embossed with ‘Lt Middleton’s Goon Squad’. 

Five other deputies for the Sheriff’s Office, and one from the Richland Police Department, have been charged with conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice.

Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Middleton and Daniel Opdyke, and ex-police officer Joshua Hartfield, were all charged in relation to the assault of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in January. 

Elward was charged with home invasion and aggravated assault for shoving a gun in the mouth of Jenkins and pulling the trigger – in what prosecutors called a ‘mock execution’.

They are accused of assaulting them with sex toys, firearms, stun guns, milk, eggs, alcohol and chocolate syrup on January 24. 

The cops are potentially facing a maximum combined sentence of 641 years and two life sentences in prison for state and federal charges, as well as a combined $12.25 million in fines. 

Dedmon was charged with home invasion after kicking in a door, with McAlpin, Middleton, Opdyke and Hartfield each facing an additional charge of first-degree obstruction of justice.

Middleton admitted in court that he was convicted of vehicular manslaughter in 2007 for hitting/killing a man. 

The victims stared down their attackers after arriving together in court, sitting in the front row just feet away from their attackers’ families.  

Prosecutors say that some of the officers nicknamed themselves the ‘Goon Squad’ because of their willingness to use excessive force and cover it up.

They were targeted after a white neighbor complained that two black men were staying at the home with a white woman. 

Parker was a childhood friend of the homeowner, Kristi Walley, who has been paralyzed since she was 15 – and he was helping to care for her.  

All of the officers have pleaded guilty to the state charges on Monday, and previously pleaded in a connected federal civil rights case. 

In January, the officers entered a property in Mississippi without a warrant, and handcuffed Jenkins and Parker before assaulting them. 

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British intelligence in the dock for CIA torture

Recent developments raise the prospect that British intelligence agents could finally face justice for their little-known role in the CIA’s global torture program.

Britain’s foreign and domestic intelligence apparatus is facing scrutiny by a tribunal tasked with intelligence oversight. On May 26, London’s infamously opaque Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) unanimously issued a landmark ruling which means the complaints of two Saudis brutally tortured at CIA black sites and jailed for years in Guantanamo Bay can finally be heard, at least behind closed doors.

The British government insisted that the Tribunal, which explicitly examines wrongdoing by London’s security and intelligence agencies, did not have jurisdiction over the cases of Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Abd al-Rahim Nashiri. But the IPT disagreed.

Noting that “the underlying issues raised by this complaint are of the gravest possible kind,” the tribunal declared that “if the allegations are true, it is imperative that that should be established,” as “it would be in the public interest for these issues to be considered.”

The ruling means the Tribunal is likely to hear a complaint from Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who’s remained in US custody since American troops captured the man they claim is “a senior al-Qaida member” in 2003.

Al-Hawsawi bounced between CIA black sites for three years before being shipped to the US torture camp in illegally-occupied Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Along the way, he was subjected to brutal “enhanced interrogation” techniques, including rectal examinations conducted with “excessive force,” from which he was severely injured and reportedly suffers ongoing health problems to this day.

Lawyers for al-Hawsawi say they have proof that British intelligence agents illegally “aided, abetted, encouraged, facilitated, procured and/or conspired” with the US to torture and abuse their client.

Al-Hawsawi is one of just five remaining Guantanamo detainees to have been charged over alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

According to the declassified summary of the US Senate report into CIA torture, al-Hawsawi was one of several prisoners held and abused “despite doubts and questions surrounding their knowledge of terrorist threats and the location of senior al-Qaeda leadership.”

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HOW A NOTORIOUS GEORGIA ARMY SCHOOL BECAME AMERICA’S TRAINING GROUND FOR GLOBAL TORTURE

Fort Benning, the infamous Georgia U.S. military base, is once again in the news, changing its name to Fort Moore, thereby ditching its Confederate name. Yet none of the media covering the rebranding – not The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, ABC, CBS News, USA Today nor The Hill – mentioned the most controversial aspect of the institution.

Across Latin America, the very name of Fort Benning is enough to strike terror into the hearts of millions, bringing back visions of massacres and genocides. This is because the fort is home to the School of the Americas (now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC), a shadowy academy where around 84,000 Latin American soldiers and police officers have been taught on the U.S. dime on how to kill, torture and how to stamp out political activists.

Thus, these units effectively serve as shock troops for the U.S. Empire, making their country safe for American multinationals to pillage. MintPress has found that no fewer than 16 School of the Americas graduates would go on to become heads of state in their country.

“The school is controversial partly because of its role in promoting US hegemony in Latin America, which undermines the sovereignty and independence of other countries,” James Jordan, national co-coordinator at Alliance for Global Justice, told MintPress, adding,

But even worse, it is how the school has promoted this: teaching methods of torture – even publishing torture manuals, counterintelligence, psyops, repression of political voices that don’t meet the approval of Washington DC. If one looks at cases of human rights abuses by the military throughout Latin America, the number of those responsible who were trained at the School of the Americas is simply staggering.”

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US Prison Allegedly Tortured Prisoners In Retaliation

A new report documents civil rights abuses, including torture, that allegedly occurred at a United States prison in Illinois. It contains several examples of retaliation against prisoners who challenged their abusive treatment and confinement conditions.

Prison staff are accused of creating a “culture of fear and intimidation that systematically suppressed the use of the grievance process,” which effectively emboldens and shields the people who are supposed to be held accountable.

“This report is dedicated to the brave individuals who, despite facing retaliation, physical danger, and psychological trauma, spoke out about the conditions in the Special Management Unit [SMU] at the United States Penitentiary in Thomson, Illinois,” the first page declares.

The Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs, Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago, and Levy Firestone Muse LLP in Washington, D.C. conducted “at least 100 interviews and legal calls, and reviewed over a thousand pages of correspondence and institutional records.”

“We uncovered a widespread culture of abuse involving officials up and down the chain of command,” the report states [PDF]. “Thomson staff assaulted people in the SMU almost daily—for personal reasons, retaliation for grieving prior abuses, and sometimes for no reason at all.”

“Five individuals imprisoned at USP Thomson died unnatural deaths between 2019 and 2022, the most of any BOP [Bureau of Prisons] facility. Countless other individuals suffered serious injuries and unquantifiable psychological trauma, and many risked grave retaliations just to stand up for their rights.”

As the report makes clear, prisoners who challenge their treatment by filing grievance forms do so at great risk.

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The CIA’s anal ‘feeding tube’ torture

Last week in a federal courtroom at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an American physician hired by the Pentagon testified about the CIA’s use of rectal “feeding” tubes on prisoners it detained and tortured in Thailand from 2001 to 2006.

The physician, Sondra S. Crosby, M.D., an expert on tortures and other trauma, described the painful repeated insertion of plastic tubes into the anal cavity of the defendant in the case, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, over a period of four years. Al-Nashiri is on trial for conspiracy to bomb the USS Cole in October 2000.

The hearing at which Dr. Crosby testified was ordered by the military judge when defense counsel told him the nature and extent of the torture visited upon their client by the CIA and its contractors. Dr. Crosby was given access to CIA raw notes and reports, some of which had not been seen by the investigators who produced the 2014 U.S. Senate 500-page documented study on CIA torture during the administration of President George W. Bush.

The site in Thailand at which al-Nashiri was tortured was run by Gina Haspel, the future CIA director, nicknamed by her colleagues “Bloody Gina.” The CIA infamously made videos of the torture of al-Nashiri and others, which Haspel destroyed.

Dr. Crosby, who was harshly critical of the CIA’s use of this internationally condemned interrogation technique, which is criminal under federal law, revealed that the CIA notes reflected that al-Nashiri and others who received this barbaric treatment were actually being fed nutrients via these anal tubes. She told the court that this must have been a subterfuge as there is simply no biological means to nourish a person via the person’s anal cavity.

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These Bizarre CIA Documents Expose The Most Horrifying Secrets

“The Central Intelligence Agency has been a core part of the United States’ defense against foreign and domestic enemies for decades. However, it has attracted plenty of criticism for its methods and motives over the years. Declassified documents have only fuelled this criticism, revealing all manner of unethical or illegal conduct hidden in the CIA’s closet. Many of the declassified secrets are more absurd than creepy. Wacky plots and absurd technology like bird spy drones, catfish spy drones, dragonfly spy drones – a lot of animal spy drones, come to think of it – are among the stranger revelations from declassified archives. However, some of these documents reveal far more gruesome secrets. Plans for political assassinations, mind control, torture, and even inciting international wars reveal that the CIA has gotten up to far more than the public ever suspected.”

The Legacy of George W. Bush and His Torturers

In the days and months following the attacks of 9/11, the government laid the blame for orchestrating the attacks on Osama bin Ladin. Then, after bin Ladin was murdered in his home in Pakistan in 2011, the government decided that the true mastermind of 9/11 was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

By the time of bin Ladin’s death, Mohammed had already been tortured by CIA agents for two years in Pakistan and charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder, to be tried before an American military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Throughout the entire existence of the U.S. military detention camp at Gitmo, no one has been tried for causing or carrying out the crimes of 9/11. The government only tried one person for crimes related to 9/11. That was Zacharias Moussaoui who pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to being the 20th hijacker and then was tried in a penalty phase trial where the issue was life in prison or death. The government spent millions in its death penalty case, which it lost. A civilian jury sentenced Moussaoui, who never harmed a hair on the head of anyone, to life in prison.

Mohammed, meanwhile, and four other alleged conspirators, have been awaiting trial since their arrivals at Gitmo in 2006. Since then, numerous government military and civilian prosecutors, as well as numerous military judges, have rotated into and out of the case.

The concept of military tribunals was born in the administration of President George W. Bush, who argued that 9/11, though conducted by civilians, was an attack of military magnitude and thus warranted a military response. This pathetic knee-jerk argument, of course, not only brought us the fruitless and destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; it also brought a host of legal problems unforeseen by Bush and his revenge-over-justice thirsty colleagues.

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GOV. RON DESANTIS OVERSAW TORTURE IN GUANTÁNAMO AS A MILITARY LAWYER

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s political star is on the rise, with many commentators identifying him as the heir apparent to a post-Trump GOP. For someone with such an immense public persona, DeSantis has been curiously tight-lipped about his military past. A bombshell new report from journalist and Army veteran Mike Prysner on his podcast Eyes Left now reveals why. According to former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mansoor Adayfi, DeSantis oversaw torture in Guantánamo, greenlighting everything from beatings to forced feedings of hunger-striking detainees. After his stint in Guantánamo, DeSantis was deployed to Fallujah to act as the US military’s human rights lawyer during the Second Gulf War. Mike Prysner joins TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez to discuss his reporting, and what DeSantis’s past tells us about the future he has in store for all of us.

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Cop Found Guilty After Video Showed Him Savagely Torture Handcuffed Man & Cover It Up

 In 2020, a federal grand jury returned a 12-count indictment against three very bad cops – officers Joseph Chase Winkle, Jeremy Gibson, and sergeant Joseph Krejsa of the Muncie Police Department for their roles in using excessive force and attempting to cover up the misconduct. Video from the officers’ body cameras was crucial in securing the charges.

The indictment charges Winkle with nine felonies, Gibson with one felony offense, and Krejsa with two felony offenses. Now, nearly two years later, and Winkle has pleaded guilty to 11 counts while Gibson has pleaded to one. Krejsa remains on paid leave.

“According to the superseding indictment, Winkle’s actions included kicking, punching, knee striking, and using a taser on arrestees without justification, and resulted in bodily injury to the arrestees,” a news release from the US Attorney’s Office read.

The maximum penalty for the deprivation-of-rights offenses is 10 years in prison and the maximum penalty for false report offenses is 20 years of imprisonment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

According to the charges, one of the victims suffered serious injuries from Winkle’s attack and another was knocked unconscious.

Body camera video from one of the arrests shows Winkle and another officer handcuffing a compliant man before deploying a taser on him causing him to writhe in pain. As the handcuffed man squirms in agony, the officer viciously attacked him with fists, tasers, and knee strikes.

Gibson was involved in similar attacks and is accused of depriving victims of their right to be free from excessive force by stomping on them and delivering multiple knee strikes.

Krejsa sat back and watched his two subordinates beat their victims and helped them cover it up afterward.

As RTV6 reported at the time, on one occasion, Krejsa minimized the level of force used by Winkle during one arrest, and, on another occasion, falsely represented that a different Muncie Police Department sergeant cleared Winkle of his use of force when it was actually Krejsa who conducted that review.

In other words, they investigated themselves and found they did nothing wrong.

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‘Wires To My Genitalia’: UN Report Details How Both Russia And Ukraine Tortured Prisoners Of War

Both Ukraine and Russia have committed acts against prisoners of war that amount to torture, a United Nations human rights body said in a report Tuesday.

The Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) cited instances of both Ukrainian and Russian forces subjecting prisoners of war (POWs) to electric shocks, beatings and forced nudity, according to testimony from over 300 prisoners interviewed during the course of several months, the organization found. A “vast majority” of Ukrainian POWs reported experiencing torture, while reports from Russian detainees were localized to three specific holding centers early in the conflict, mission leader Matilda Bogner said.

“The fundamental obligation of a state is to treat all prisoners of war in their power humanely at all times — from the very moment they are captured until their release and repatriation,” Bogner said, adding that Ukraine and Russia have both acceded to the Third Geneva Convention mandating fair treatment of former prisoners of war.

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