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Showing posts with label ill treatment of prisoners abroad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ill treatment of prisoners abroad. Show all posts
A letter was handed into the Lithuanian Embassy in Dublin at the weekend by the family of Liam Campbell who is facing extradition to Lithuania.

To the Lithuanian Embassy,

We gather here today, in defiance, against the Lithuanian state and their officials, operating from Dublin, who seek to bring about a British backed attempt to force the extradition of Liam Campbell, from Ireland to Lithuania. A foreign Country, Liam Campbell was Never in!

Having endured successive European arrest warrants issued by the Lithuanian state, served on him by agents of the British and their Free State counterparts here in Ireland, we the people demand an end to the of injustices suffered daily by Liam Campbell. We come united, alongside the Campbell family to show our conviction and solidarity to Stop The Extradition Of Liam Campbell!



As far back as January 2009 Liam Campbell was arrested and issued with his first extradition warrant. Four months later, whilst on bail, he was wrongfully re-arrested by the British, who by stealth, overseen a second extradition warrant by the Lithuanian State, in May 2009.

Imprisoned in Maghaberry Prison, Belfast, Liam Campbell was held in solitary confinement for four years. He was NEVER questioned, nor convicted of a crime! Liam won his case in the High Court in March 2013. It was appealed by the British in the Supreme Court in London, who ruled in August 2013 there was no case to answer.

Liam Campbell was returned to his family. What Liam did not know was that a third extradition warrant was issued by the Lithuanian state also in August 2013 and held for 3 years, before being sent to Dublin. In December 2016, Liam Campbell was arrested for a third time which began his most recent struggle against extradition.

This is scheduled to take place by order of the High Court in Dublin on Monday 13th July 2020; 9 days from now.

We strenuously denounce all attempts to render him into the barbaric and unsanitary prison conditions as evidenced in reports made by the Committee for the prevention of torture and degrading treatment (CPT) in 2018 and consistent in their report in 2019.

Reports which detail to us the extreme prisoner on prisoner gang violence (foreign prisoners, in particular, are targeted), accounts of sexual assault, inhumane treatment and intimidation perpetrated by "special intervention units", notorious within the Lithuanian prison regime of today.

Locked in pre-trial detention, 24 hours a day for an unknown number of years, with restrictive access to his legal documents only partially transcribed in his native tongue, and only at the discretion of a foreign state prosecutor, hell-bent on securing a corrupt conviction.

Notwithstanding, that in May 2018 a European Court delivered a damning guilty verdict against Lithuanian state, otherwise known as "Camp Violet" by CIA militia, for their involvement in operating "black sites" used as torture chambers; and a litany of successive abuses which resulted in hefty convictions from the European courts and testament to their ingrained flagrant denial of fair trial rights and failure to safeguard the right of citizens, including our own Irish citizens who have suffered extensively in the hands of this Lithuanian state.

Lithuania, we call you out on your states abuse of process that would prevent repatriation to Ireland for Liam Campbell, in your denial of rights as set out in the United Nations declaration on human rights act (UDHR) in the charter of fundamental rights (1998). They are not rights for good behaviour but alienable entitlements to all people.

We hereby declare our full support and determination to Stop The Extradition Of Liam Campbell! and call for an end, to an 11.5-year long witch hunt of our countryman.

Our determination will not waiver!

Signed
The Campbell family
Friends and supporters 

Liam Campbell Extradition Opposed

From The Guardian - Five inmates died this month (January) in notorious Mississippi prison marked by racism and neglect – prisoners and families demand urgent reform.

By Oliver Laughland  

“People were begging for their lives as they were stabbed,” said Kelly Mallett, as his gaze drifted. “There were fires being set. Trash everywhere. Rats. Roaches. It was just total chaos.”

The 44-year-old is a former inmate at Mississippi’s crumbling state penitentiary at Parchman, part of a sprawling, century-old prison farm complex in the north of the state. He had only been free for two days and was the first eyewitness to speak freely in public about the days of bloody rioting inside Parchman over the new year, a facility that remains shrouded in the legacy of Jim Crow, marked by decaying conditions and its culture of brutality.

In a single week, five inmates in the Mississippi correctional system were killed, three in Parchman, during violence state officials tied to a bitter gang rivalry that dominates prisons in the state. But the bloodshed has also drawn attention to what lawmakers say are routine constitutional violations, as well as the chronic underfunding of a system that incarcerates people at a rate almost twice the American average.

“For 48 hours it was just violence,” said Mallett, who served an eight-year sentence for a non-violent drug crime. “Nothing but violence, before any help.” …

...  “It is pure hell there,” he said. “Inside you have no rights.”

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

Inside The US Prison Where Inmates 'Begged For Their Lives' Amid Days Of Violence

From The Guardian a harrowing story of how it is for some in the US prison system. 

A prisoner with a history of mental illness was held in solitary confinement at a prison in Virginia for over 600 days, leading to a collapse in his physical and mental condition, a new lawsuit alleges.  

Tyquine Lee, 26, is being held at Red Onion state prison and lost over 30lb, the ability to speak, recognize his mother or even remember his own name, the lawsuit states.

Between 26 May 2016 and 31 January 2018, Lee spent more than 22 hours a day in an 80 sq ft concrete cell behind a steel door. His only time outside of the cell was three showers a week and an hour of recreation each day in a steel cage the size of a parking space.

“He went from talking regular to talking in numbers, and a whole other language which I nor anyone else could understand,” said Takeisha Brown, Lee’s mother and legal guardian who filed the lawsuit with the MacArthur Justice Center.

She said: “My heart ached from pain when I heard from my son and I could not get a regular conversation out of him. I’ve lost sleep, and couldn’t eat because of this.”

Prison reform advocates in the US have called for solitary confinement to be banned because they say it constitutes torture. Studies have demonstrated its destructive psychological effects; reformers say there is little to no evidence the practice reduces prison violence. 

Continue reading @ The Guardian.

Mentally Ill US Prisoner Held In Solitary Lost Ability To Speak, Lawsuit Alleges

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