Seminar Identifies Torture in U.S. Prisons

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Thursday, 11 March 2010 13:01

On February 13, 2010, the Muslim Alliance in North America’s (MANA) Social Justice Task Force held an extremely successful seminar on the human rights violations committed in the U.S. Prison System.

The Seminar – held in snow covered Washington DC at Howard University -- brought together a wide array of prominent activists and experts who riveted the crowd of about 75 participants with history, analysis and first-hand accounts of the U.S. Prison system’s use of the inhumane punishment including 23-hour lock-down in Super Max prison, control units and administrative segregation.

Bonnie Kerness of the American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch recounted how 24/7 solitary confinement and sensory deprivation was adopted in the early 1980s as a means of breaking the revolutionaries and activists who were jailed in the 1970s. Soffiyah Elijah of Harvard’s Criminal Justice Institute described the many horror stories of the psychological and physiological torture of long periods of isolation. Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. Attorney General, recounted the many past missteps and abuses of the U.S. government and paid tribute to the heroic example of Imam Jamil Al-Amin who now suffers in a Super Max prison under 23-hour lock-down.

Natsu Saito, law professor at Georgia State University, detailed the international path that can be taken to put pressure on the U.S. government to end torture. Masai Ehehosi of the Republic of New Afrika and Jihad Abdul-Mumit reflected on their own experiences in the prison system and reminded the audience that many of the political prisoners who suffer this form of torture are Muslims. Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society’s Freedom Foundation and Mauri Salaakhan of the Peace and Justice Foundation urged Muslims to become involved, and cited the many recent cases, such as that of Aafiya Siddiqui, where Muslims are suffering through the criminal justice system.

Resolutions of the Seminar on U.S. Prison System

The MANA Social Justice Task Force Seminar on the U.S. Prison System:

1) Calls upon the U.S. Congress and the Department of Justice to launch an investigation and to hold hearings on the practice of 23-hour isolation in Super Max prisons and control units to determine whether such practices are inhumane and as such deserve to be eliminated.

2) Calls for an independent investigation of the practice of 23-hour isolation in Super Max prisons and control unit to determine whether such practices are inhumane and as such deserve to be eliminated.

3) Calls upon the U.S. Congress to launch an investigation and hold hearings on the practice of the FBI’s COINTELPRO to determine if misconduct and legal violations were committed.

4) Calls upon MANA’s Social Justice Task Force and other groups to work together to go to UN bodies to make the case that Super Max prisons and 23-hour isolation is a violation of international law.

5) Calls upon the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons to end Imam Jamil Al-Amin’s unwarranted and inhumane incarceration in a federal Super Max prison where he is locked up in complete isolation for 23 hours.

6) Calls upon the American Muslim community to develop working relations with activists and activist organizations to jointly address issues of social justice.

7) Calls upon the American Muslim community to become more aware and involved in issues of community service and social justice in America, in order to be an instrument of change.

Calls upon MANA to form a broad-based task force which will focus on ending the practice of 23-hour isolation.

Source: MANA

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The US Prison System: Muslim & Human Rights Violations: Quotes from Speakers

“We have to organize. Look at [Sami] Al-Arian. For helping poor, starving Palestinians … he is in prison, in large part because he is Muslim. We have to persevere in the struggle …. we’ll give up if we don’t.” – Ramsey Clark, Former US Attorney General

“What’s happening here and around the world is genocidal. When the object is elimination – when we survive, we win. [We win] by keeping our identity, our history, and our culture … and we’re still here.... In the mind of the colonizing power, law is very important. It’s used to justify their actions. The law is not applied reciprocally because the colonized are ‘others’. Did the natives have souls? That was a big debate going on [when Europeans first came to America].... If we don’t continue to resist, power will continue to encroach. Resistance puts up a barrier. Even if full victory is not achieved, it gives us enough ground to survive and continue on.” – Dr. Natsu Taylor Saito, Law Professor at Georgia State University