Prison

1 September 2013News

Hunger strikes continue in Guantanamo and California

It was reported on 6 August, that 60 people being held in the United States military’s Guantánamo Bay detention centre were continuing a hunger strike against their continued imprisonment without trial.

The hunger strike has lasted six months and at one point involved over 100 of the 160 detainees. Many hunger strikers have suffered force-feeding, a practice  widely condemned as torture.

The remaining British resident, Shaker Aamer, who has been detained for 11 years, is among…

1 September 2013Review

PM Press, 2013; 133pp; £11.99

Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera has the dubious distinction of being one of the longest-serving political prisoners in the world.

Having served in the US army in Vietnam, Rivera returned to Chicago and started working to improve living conditions for Puerto Ricans in the city.

Radicalised during this period, he became a forceful advocate for Puerto Rican independence from the United States. Facing police repression, Rivera went underground for several years. In 1981…

1 December 2012News in Brief

As PN headed to the printers, Brian Terrell was heading to prison for a drone protest at Whiteman air force base on 15 April with Ron Faust and Mark Kenney. The three were arrested at the base while trying to deliver an indictment to the base commander, brigadier general Scott A Vander Hamm, charging everyone involved in drone operations with extrajudicial killings, wars of aggression and other crimes.

Mark Kenney served a four-month sentence ending on 11 November, and Ron Faust was…

1 December 2012News in Brief

Hannah Brock, the new WRI worker writes: 1 December marks ‘Prisoners for Peace’ day.

For more than 50 years, War Resisters’ International has used this opportunity to make known the names and stories of those imprisoned for their actions for peace.

Some are conscientious objectors, detained for their refusal to join the military. Others have taken nonviolent direct actions to disrupt preparations for war.

This day is a chance for you to demonstrate your support.

25 September 2012News in Brief

On 28 August, Dr Shakir Hamoodi, 59, an Iraq-born US citizen, began a three-year sentence for sending money between 1991 and 2003 to his relatives in Iraq, and the families of friends living in Iraq, to help relieve suffering caused by the UN sanctions.

A five-year FBI investigation found the father of five had not sent any money to the Iraqi government.

28 August 2012News in Brief

On 25 July, exactly two years after the WikiLeaks release of the Afghan war diaries, the following banners were unfurled at the summit of Snowdon in Wales: ‘Free Bradley Manning’, ‘Don’t shoot the messengers! Free Manning. Free Assange. End the wars.’

WISE Up Action, a solidarity network for Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, held the demo to support US army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning (who has Welsh roots) who has been held for two years in pre-trial detention on charges of…

2 July 2012News in Brief

Former British police spy Mark Kennedy, who infiltrated anti-climate change and other activist groups between 2003 and 2010 (see PN 2530), is now working as a security consultant for the Densus Group in the US, providing ‘investigative services, risk and threat assessments’, according to an entry on his online LinkedIn profile.

The new job, like Kennedy’s initial exposure, was first reported on the activist media website Indymedia before being picked up as ‘exclusive’ breaking news by…

2 July 2012News in Brief

The 169 men held in the US Guantánamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, including 87 cleared for release, can no longer challenge their indefinite detention without trial.

That is the effect of a US supreme court ruling handed down on 21 June, refusing to uphold a previous ruling in 2008, while giving no reasons.

In 2008, the supreme court gave Guantánamo prisoners the right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention under habeas corpus. Subsequently, lower courts whittled away…

2 July 2012News

US activist faces stiff jail sentence for resisting military recruiting

On 21 May, a US judge in Pennsylvania asked peace activist Norman Lowry, prosecuted for blockading a local recruiting office, to ‘forswear’ blockading military recruiting offices in future. Otherwise the court would be ‘obliged’ to impose the maximum sentence of seven years. 

Lowry refused to give such an undertaking and was sentenced to one-to-seven years, the implication being that if he later agreed to give such an undertaking, he could be paroled after serving a year.

Lowry…

30 May 2012News

Recent campaigning in Wales in solidarity with the US whistleblower.

WISE Up for Bradley Manning is a grassroots network in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England (WISE) taking action for the young US military intelligence analyst who has been held by the US government for two years without trial.

Accused of blowing the whistle on US war crimes and revealing other truths the US would have preferred to keep buried, Bradley Manning has been tortured and denied his constitutional rights.

When US president Barack Obama, commander-in-chief of the…

31 March 2012Comment

I was really frightened of going to prison. I’d had a really bad experience of being in a boys-only boarding school, and I thought prison would be like that except worse.

To be honest, I think quite a lot of it was classism. Being a middle-class person from a privileged background, the thing that I thought would be ‘worse’ was that it would be a working-class men-only environment.

I don’t know whether that meant I was frightened of it being violent (my upper-middle-…

30 March 2012News

Two peace activists found guilty in 2009 of highway obstruction during an anti-war protest were jailed in the last month.

Both Maya Evans, imprisoned in HMP Bronzefield on 29 February, and Gabriel Carlyle (PN promotions worker), sent to Lewes prison on 21 March, were sentenced to £355 in fines and court costs; both were imprisoned by Hastings magistrates court for two weeks for refusal to pay, after two years of fending off bailiffs.

The May 2009 action was a die-in for NATO’s victims in Afghanistan, held outside the gates of a base in north London.

4 March 2012Blog

A thirteen-day prison sentence poses an odd problem for peace campaigner Maya Evans and her supporters.

Up betimes at 5.30am, to catch the 6.08am tube to Vauxhall and thence the 6.32am overland train, arriving at Ashford (Surrey) station at 7.03am. From there, a short walk brought me to Her Majesty’s Prison Bronzefield.

I’d been there once before - to see Susan Clarkson out of jail - and the reception assured me that Maya would be released shortly. They…

1 March 2012News in Brief

Egyptian pacifist Maikel Nabil Sanad has finally been released by the military authorities. Maikel was arrested on 29 March last year for criticising the military for its role during and after the Egyptian uprising. He was convicted by successive military courts of ‘insulting’ the army and ‘spreading false information’.

Peace News has been following Maikel’s case since the beginning (see PN 2533 for the background).

Maikel was finally released on the anniversary of the uprising…

1 March 2012News in Brief

On 19 January, Christian activist Chris Cole was sentenced to 30 days in prison by Westminster magistrates for non-payment of £1,545 in fines and £350 in court costs. The fine was imposed after Chris was found guilty of criminal damage: spraying ‘Build Peace Not War Machines’ and ‘Stop This Bloody Business’ on the Queen Elizabeth II centre in September 2009. At the time, the QEII was hosting a reception for arms dealers during the DSEi arms fair.

On 25 January, Barbara Dowling, 66,…