It’s always good to have independent journalists come to your events because then you get sweet coverage! Evan Herzoff came to Denver ABC’s first Letter Writing Dinner and laid down some solid analysis as to what political prisoners and prisoners of war are and why the United States government needs to own up to the fact that they’ve got political prisoners locked up too.
Check out his post on Indymedia US here.
You can also follow the rest of his journalism at All Voices.
from freeahmadsaadat.org:
Imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred on August 11, 2009 to Ramon prison in the Naqab desert from Asqelan prison, where he had been held for a number of months. He remains in isolation; prior to his transfer from Asqelan, he had been held since August 1 in a tiny isolation cell of 140 cm x 240 cm after being penalized for communicating with another prisoner in the isolation unit.
Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners’ and detainees’ rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa’adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners’ movement. Sa’adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect.
Ahmad Sa’adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners’ rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners’ rights in the Israeli prison system.
Sa’adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a Zionist military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.
Sa’adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended.
Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem.jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa’adat!
Sa’adat has been repeatedly moved in an attempt to punish him for his steadfastness and leadership and to undermine his leadership in the prisoners’ movement. Of course, these tactics have done nothing of the sort. The Palestinian prisoners are daily on the front lines, confronting Israeli oppression and crimes. Today, it is urgent that we stand with Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners against these abuses, and for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and for all of Palestine!
Sgt. Travis Bishop, who served 14 months in Baghdad with the 3rd Signal Brigade, faces a court-martial this Friday for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. Bishop is the second soldier from Fort Hood in as many weeks to be tried by the military for his stand against an occupation he believes is “illegal.” He insists that it would be unethical for him to deploy to support an occupation he opposes on both moral and legal grounds and he has filed for conscientious objector (CO) status.
Spc. Victor Agosto was court-martialed last week for his refusal to deploy to Afghanistan. Agosto’s lawyer, James Branum, who is also Bishop’s lawyer, is the legal adviser to the GI Rights Hotline of Oklahoma and co-chair of the Military Law Task Force. Branum told Truthout during a phone interview on July 10 that, contrary to mainstream opinion that believes Afghanistan to be a “justified” war, the invasion and ongoing occupation are actually in violation of the US Constitution and international law.
Florida Rapper Antavio “T.O.” Johnson has received 2 years imprisonment for his song “Kill Me A Cop,” in which he names two specific officers. We have posted the song in solidarity with Antavio, all people experiencing repression for voicing legitimate frustration with the police, and all communities being terrorized by the police.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsVKh69qR9g]
Last Saturday a gunman opened fired in Tel Aviv gay club, killing 2 and wounding 11. Here is some sharp reflection on its meaning from our comrades at Bash Back!:
TEL AVIV: PINK COMMUNITIES COALITION FORMS IN RESPONSE TO TRAGEDY
August 10, 2009, 1:44 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
Last Saturday a nightmare came true: we where hunted down.
A faceless man went into a room full of youngsters and opened fire.
Now 2 of them are dead and many wounded, some outed on a hospital bed.
When the news of the murder came, it was all too easy for me to picture the scene – I used to spend most of my waking hours in this secluded basement flat in central Tel Aviv, the offices of the Israeli GLBT association, Haaguda, working on Pride and AIDS awareness events.
We felt very safe there. Confidant. We had the of City Tel Aviv on our side, hanging rainbow flags on demand. We had the police doing our bidding instead of detaining and forbidding.
Ok, we had to swallow a few LGBT – phobic jokes from officers, bureaucrats, and commercial sponsors. But we thought it was a small price to pay for ten’s of thousands marching in the streets of Tel Aviv, safe and proud, landing courage to countless kids across the country.
The price we paid now isn’t small. It is immeasurable. The life of 2. The health of 15 , a collective trauma.
I do not feel safe now In Tel Aviv. Our strong hold. Our ghetto. I feel grief stricken and furious and betrayed.
I want to know who was this man in a ski mask dealing death in whose name. Was it a homophobic zealot? A fascist? A crazed family member or even a lover? How can I spot his kind and seek shelter when I recognize danger?
Maybe I should simply watch out for man with machine guns.
But this if far from simple In Israel, where most young men are drafted at 18, many issued a gun. Reserves soldiers – the entire able boded male population – often take their gun home too. There are guns on the bus, guns in Cafes, guns in restaurants, guns on the trains and the beach. Security guards and police have pistols. Settlers carry fire arms where ever they go.
In fact, there are probably only 3 segments of the population in Israel that are less likely to have access to guns: Work migrants, Palestinians, and ultra religious Jews.
Yesterday the Israeli police accused the LGBTQ communities of prematurely calling the murders a hate crime. Of inciting hate against other minority populations.
I agree with the police- it is too easy to point the finger at the extreme religious parties. Or at immigrants. Better look for the real villains: Better accuse the policemen who on Sunday called the supporters of the evacuated families in east Jerusalem, filthy fagots – When Many of them arrived directly from a memorial demo protesting the murders in Tel Aviv. Better investigate law enforcers calling conscientious objectors stupid dykes while smashing their heads on the pavement. Better be ware of the police arresting and bashing queer activists in Central Tel Aviv on the very same day as the murders, after they have tried to protect refugees and their children from being deported.
Better point the finger at the soldiers who kill peace loving men and youth in none violent demos in Palestine, and round up others in the dead of night.
I accuse them of creating a society of hatred and brute force where no minority is safe.
But it is also too easy to blame the police. The police is only a symptom, a tool of the government and the state. The same government who did nothing when calls for our blood where heard from its benches. The same state that it’s president, Shimeon Peres, objected in 2007 to the Pride parade in Jerusalem in – where 3 people where stabbed only 2 years earlier.
Many of us in the Jewish LGBTQ community in Israel believed we would be safe if we will “be like everyone else” be mothers, solders, consumers. Be poster boys and girls for “the only democracy in the middle east”. Be a tourist attraction.
We were told that we could be safe if we distance ourselves from any hint of otherness. Because “the other” draws fire.
We are not safe. We are being murdered. And in order to protect our self we should be nothing like everyone else. We should demand they put away the guns they use to shoot us. We should denounce violence and repression of other minorities. We should honor the murdered by remembering – Homophobia is Racism. Racism is Homophobia.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
A hearing to determine the status of one last defendant in a 38-year-old case of a slain San Francisco police officer was delayed Monday. The hearing will resume Oct. 9.
Francisco Torres is the last of the defendants who were to stand trial for the 1971 shotgun death of Sgt. John Young at the Ingleside Station.
San Francisco police arrested eight men in 2007 in connection with the attack, accusing them of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. After some of the conspiracy charges were dismissed because of the statute of limitations, one defendant was dropped from the case.
Earlier this summer, Anthony Bottom and Herman Bell, two defendants in the Ingleside case who are serving life sentences in New York for the murders of two New York City police officers in 1971, entered pleas to lesser charges. Bell pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and Bottom pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors then dismissed charges against all of the defendants except Torres. Police investigators say Torres’ fingerprint was found on a lighter left at the scene of the attack at Ingleside.
From Support Jesse James Forrey
After deliberating for nearly eight hours the jurors returned with a guilty verdict…. we are staying close to Jesse and supporting each other. But this is really hard.
Hopefully we’ll get it together to write up a summary of the trial. Jesse’s next court date is Sept. 17th, it will be his sentencing.
We will be posting again soon with new ways to help, this isn’t over and we have a lot to do in the next six weeks.
Thank you to all who came to Jesse’s trial and who have called and offered support this past week. It has really helped all of us and it means a lot to have had a courtroom full of people showing the jurors that he is someone that is cared about, that the outcome of his case effects a lot of people. Together we are stronger than anything that comes out of the Ramsey County Courthouse.
We would also like to extend our unending thanks and love to Barbara, Jesse’s lawyer, she put all of herself into this case. If you would like to write her and thank her as well, which we highly recommend you do, write us and we’ll send you her address.
August 7th, 1970, seventeen year-old Jonathon Jackson attempted to liberate his brother, George Jackson, and the rest of the Soledad Brothers by taking hostages at the Marin County Courthouse in California at the trial of San Quentin prisoner John McClain. With the use of weapons smuggled into the courthouse, Jackson, McClain, and prisoners Ruchell Macgee and William Christmas took five hostages, including Judge Harold Haley. The police opened fired on the escape vehicle, killing Jackson, McClain, Christmas, and Haley.
Revolutionary intellectual Angela Davis was tied to the guns used by Jackson during the attempted liberation. A mass federal hunt for her was launched, eventually leading to her imprisonment.
George Jackson, Jonathon’s inspiration, is one of the most famous political prisoners from the Black Power movement. He authored Soledad Brother and Blood In My Eye, both essential readings for movement defense in the US. He was eventually assassinated in San Quentin prison on August 21, 1971.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q850cKcL7HE&feature=related]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B13efli-obE&feature=related]
From NACLA.org:
On July 3 Mexican federal investigators pulled Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno from his prison cell to an interrogation room for the fifth time. The fierce questioning, laced with expletives and threats, had one goal: Force Martínez’s confession to the murder of U.S. journalist Brad Will.
Martínez’s lawyer, Alba Gabriela Cruz, says her client has suffered intense “psychological torture” and lives in fear. She says Martíinez once told her: “If I get out of here the federal investigators will want to kill me. I will have to leave Oaxaca.”
Martínez and his lawyer insist he is being framed for the murder of Brad Will. Martínez was arrested two years after gunmen fatally wounded Will on October 27, 2006, while he was filming street protests on the streets of Oaxaca. Human rights groups have denounced the charges against him as a complete fabrication and have initiated a campaign to demand his release. Photographs of the shooting and Will’s own video footage of his death clearly corroborate Martínez’s version. Despite authorities total lack of evidence, Martínez remains in prison and faces a potential 40-year sentence.
Cruz believes the motive behind her client’s incarceration is that for the Mexican government more than a billion dollars in drug war money hang in the balance. She says that prosecuting a culprit in the Will case – any culprit, guilty or not – helps the Mexican government whitewash its human rights record for the Obama administration. Not having someone in jail for Will’s murder would be a public relations disaster for the $1.6 billion being offered to Mexico under the Mérida Initiative – Washington’s anti-drug aid package, also known as Plan Mexico.
Cruz says, “In meetings we’ve had with the federal government they’ve told us that this is not a common case. It’s much more. It has deep international significance.” The only reason that he is still incarcerated with no evidence, she insists, is that he is “a prisoner of the Mérida Initiative.”
Father José Rentería, who along with other Oaxacan priests spearheaded a bi-national letter to the U.S. and Mexican Presidents demanding Martínez’s freedom, echoed Cruz’s theory: “His imprisonment is needed to show that there is justice in Brad Will’s case. He is a scapegoat to clear the way for this U.S. military aid.”
Recent U.S. funding bills for military aid have not conditioned aid on the prosecution of Will’s killers. But non-binding “explanatory statements” attached to the bills – including the first Plan Mexico bill passed in June 2008 – have described state and federal investigations into the murder as “flawed.” The statement also calls on the Secretary of State to submit a report “detailing progress in conducting a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation to identify the perpetrators of this crime and bring them to justice.” Similar language is attached to the 2009 installment of Plan Mexico.
The State Department has already filed one report on the case before Martinez’s arrest. The second report was blocked this week by Sen. Patrick Leahy, who rejected it for the report’s praise of Mexico’s progress on human rights.
Human rights organizations and international forensic experts have roundly denounced the Mexican government’s investigations as deeply flawed. The government’s own National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) has accused federal authorities of blindly following only one line of investigation: That Will was shot at close range by members of the social movement coalition known as the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).
Forensic reports by the CNDH and the non-governmental Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) contradict the federal government’s “short-range theory,” and all the available evidence shows the shots were fired from long-range. Pictures taken moments before Will fell to the ground show gunmen with their pistols raised and pointed in Will’s direction, shooting to kill. The armed men in the pictures have all been identified and have links to the Oaxacan state government.
Nonetheless, federal investigators rejected this evidence. They base their accusations on the testimonies of two witnesses, both connected with the state government. And yet, even their testimonies do not directly identify Martínez as Brad Will’s killer.
Before the Mérida Initiative was introduced, the Will case had been dragging on for years. CNDH Ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes, a government appointee, recognizes that the Mexican government was under pressure from Washington to resolve the case. “They weren’t going to get Merida Initiative resources if they didn’t resolve this case,” says Soberanes.
His perception is bolstered by the Mexican government’s failure to prosecute anyone else for the more than 20 assassinations and hundreds of cases of arbitrary detention and torture during the Oaxacan social conflict in 2006. State and federal police have been accused of the bulk of these crimes. Yet the only one behind bars is Martínez.
Since his arrest, the State Department has not made any official statements about the federal investigation. When asked about the case, a State Department spokesperson gave a boilerplate response: “The State Department expects that any prosecutions in the Brad Will case will be fully transparent and based on the evidence.” The State Department has not denounced the Martínez witch-hunt or the serious holes in the investigation, as detailed in both the CNDH and PHR reports.
Martínez was spending his ninth month in prison when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on July 16 that Mexico was “satisfactorily” complying with human rights. She assured that the upcoming State Department report would recommend the release of all Mérida Initiative funds. Clinton’s statement reassures not only the Mexican government, but also dozens of U.S. companies, such as Dyncorp and Blackwater, who are bidding for defense industry contracts under Plan Mexico.
Meanwhile, Martínez continues to languish in jail, refusing to confess to a murder he did not commit, despite police threats. His fears about police retaliation seem well founded: Martínez’s family reports that police have been staking out his home, sometimes taking pictures.
As the State Department mulls over its next report on the Mérida Initiative, Martínez remains Plan Mexico’s prisoner.
Wednesday, August 19
8:15am Rally, 9am Court Appearance
15. West Kellogg Boulevard, St. Paul
Check for carpool locations from Minneapolis!
***
The RNC 8 have finally been given their next court date: Wednesday, August 19 at 9am in room 1040 of the Ramsey County Courthouse in St. Paul.
The scheduling hearing will be the first court date since the motion hearings which concluded on March 3rd – a span of over 5 months between dates (a hearing originally scheduled for May 26 was later cancelled.)
We’re unsure whether the hearing will take place in open court, or privately in Judge Teresa Warner’s chambers. Either way, all of the RNC 8 and their attorneys will be in attendance. Please join them!
The RNC 8 Defense Committee will sponsor a rally outside the courthouse at 15 West Kellogg Boulevard, St. Paul from 8:15-9am on August 19, before we head upstairs to pack the courtroom. Carpool meet-up locations will be announced via our website, email announcements list, twitter (text “follow defendthernc8″ to 40404) and TC Indymedia the week before the hearing.
It’s been almost a year since the RNC, and our community has proven that court solidarity works. Show yours to Judge Warner! Help remind Ramsey County Attorney and DFL Governor candidate Susan Gaertner, and the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office that the RNC 8 are not criminals and that prosecuting activists is a disgrace. Join us on the morning of Wednesday, August 19.
Please respect the wishes of the RNC 8 and their attorneys by being noisy outside but respectful inside at this appearance. Remember that nothing that could be construed as a weapon – such as scissors or tools – are allowed in the courthouse and that all bags may be searched, so check them before you leave. Sheriff’s deputies and security personnel have been known to harass supporters at the courthouse, but we are many and they are few!
For more info, email: info@rnc8.org. For press, email: press@rnc8.org.
