
An American Black Site - whack
https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2019/06/04/force-feeding-american-prison-supermax-mohammad-salameh/
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roywiggins
> family members and attorneys in touch with SAMs prisoners can be prosecuted
> and incarcerated for repeating anything the inmate told them

This is interesting and I'd be very curious to know what the courts have made
of this kind of prior restraint. I'm not skeptical that threats of this nature
have been made, but I am skeptical that such a prosecution could actually be
brought- under what statute? Lawyers may be gagged somewhat, as an officer of
the court, but a family member seems like a real stretch.

Edit to add: here's a simple explainer on SAMs and what they do:
[https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/10/SA...](https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/10/SAMs%20Report.summary_0.pdf)

> Prisoners under SAMs are prohibited from communicating with anyone except a
> few pre-approved individuals – their attorneys and immediate family members
> – and SAMs prohibit those individuals from repeating the prisoner’s words to
> anyone else.

I am still awfully curious as to what possible statutory authority the DoJ
could have to regulate the speech of people who aren't actually incarcerated.

~~~
DuskStar
I imagine that it isn't actually prior restraint in the classic sense, but
instead in the form of an agreement that the lawyers and family members have
to sign before talking to the prisoners in question.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, I suspect that they're non-disclosure agreements. So violating them puts
one in contempt of court. And punishments for contempt are whatever judges say
they are.

~~~
roywiggins
See, that would make a least some sense. But apparently "The U.S. Attorney
General has sole discretion to impose SAMs". With court imposed gag orders
there's a court order from a judge. These things seem to be administrative
decisions about detention conditions (the same way prisons can regulate the
books prisoners can have, etc). But if so, they wouldn't ordinarily regulate
the speech of people not actually in jail. I think the worst they'd be able to
do is ban that person from visiting again, not actually prosecute them. How
can you be in contempt of court if SAMs are at the sole discretion of the AG?

~~~
mirimir
I guess that the US AG has that power. Or maybe some tame judges. I suppose
that it could go to the Supreme Court.

However, many cases have been quashed, based on national security grounds. For
criminal cases, charges against suspects have been dropped. But about SAMs,
that would likely leave the status unchanged. IANAL, though.

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module0000
This is mortifying and humiliating. It makes me ashamed to be associated(by
being a citizen and armed services veteran) with the country. I suppose I
could speak out and try to change things...but I fear that doing so would
ensure a similar fate for myself; rotting away in a secret prison, while my
family is threatened with prosecution if they talk about it.

It's all happy times here in the USA, anyone that will tell you otherwise has
already been imprisoned and/or re-educated.

~~~
anbop
Who in a US prison is there for speaking out and trying to change things? Name
one.

~~~
hdfbdtbcdg
Manning is currently in prison for refusing the illegal attempt to abuse a
grand jury to make her testify when the grand jury has already made a charge
and should have no further role.

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hdfbdtbcdg
Why are western nations retreating from any semblance of the moral high
ground?

~~~
mikeash
It’s just exposure and acceptance (or lack thereof).

Fifty years ago we (the US) were carpet bombing neutral countries as part of a
bloody war to prop up a brutal dictatorship.

Around the same time, we were shooting protestors and systematically shutting
minorities out of civic involvement.

A couple of decades before that, we put a hundred thousand innocent civilians
in concentration camps because of their ancestry.

Less than a century before that, “the land of the free” had laws allowing
people to buy and sell other people. And slavery was never really ended: the
13th Amendment has a big fat exception for prisoners, which we’ve taken
advantage of ever since.

What’s different now is that we find out what’s happening more quickly and in
a way that makes more people take notice.

~~~
mirimir
I don't know about "western nations" generally, but "American exceptionalism"
is well known.

And about TFA, millions of prisoners, mostly male and mostly black, suffer in
arguably worse conditions. Especially, I gather from a recently posted
article, prisoners in county jails.

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josefresco
Setting aside this specific situation. Let's say you run a prison, and an
inmate goes on a "hunger strike" for a reason that's important to them. What
should the prison operators do? Force feed the inmate, negotiate, give into
their demands, or let them die? Let's say you try to negotiate, but the inmate
is making unreasonable demands or you are not willing to meet their demands,
then what?

~~~
iooi
To everyone saying to let them die, then where is the punishment? Most
terrorists would rather and, in fact, intend to die during their attacks. If
you let them die, not only are you giving them what they want, but then there
is no deterrent to carrying out suicide missions.

~~~
plorkyeran
I don't see any reason to believe that the fear of prison should they fail to
die has ever, or will ever, deter even a single person from carrying out a
suicide mission.

~~~
anbop
The lack of deterrent effect doesn’t mean that society’s desire for punishment
vanishes. If there was a treatment that could make Osama Bin Laden a perfectly
normal accountant in Des Moines I would not advocate for it compared to a
trial and execution.

~~~
hdfbdtbcdg
C/f this vindictive attitude with how the Norwegians have treated Brivik. He
has been gently and humanly turned into a joke when he could have been a
martyr...

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bytematic
Crazy how there are people out there that can live with performing these acts,
or "reviewing" them even. How many thousands before they are completely
desensitized?

~~~
afandian
The "Banality of Evil" is a useful idea when trying to understand how the
Nazis did what they did. It's wrong to think that it was anyone other than
'normal' human beings who have committed atrocities through the ages.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem)

I've never been able to bring myself to read the book.

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jtms
can someone speak to the level of credibility of this site/organization? I
have never heard of them before.

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T4NG
Why isn't there more of a highlight on Salameh's actual charges. This is
grossly glossed over especially when understanding what you have to do to land
oneself in a blacksite to begin with.

~~~
dtornabene
yeah, tell that to the black teenagers dragged to Homan Square in Chicago

~~~
T4NG
which would be exactly why I would want to know the charge's

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threezero
The author really glossed over the reasons for the communications ban imposed
on the terrorist prisoner - multiple people he spoke with ended up committing
terrorist acts. Seems like a good enough reason to completely cut him off. In
addition, the author really stretches when she complains that they brought in
a gallon of liquid to feed him. If you’ve tried to feed a prisoner multiple
times and you know they’re going to deliberately vomit it up, of course you’ll
bring extra. There’s enough going on here where the author doesn’t need to add
in things that actually seem logical, because now I’m questioning everything
she wrote and how much of it was exaggerated.

~~~
roywiggins
Force feeding is arguably a form of torture.

[https://www.apnews.com/e0941d7d1b0d413b9d9a0b792c34dd26](https://www.apnews.com/e0941d7d1b0d413b9d9a0b792c34dd26)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Arguably. But if you let the prisoner die while in your custody, a lot more
people are going to be screaming about how evil you are to allow that, and how
it's your fault that they died because you didn't protect them, and it's even
_more_ your fault because you probably wanted them dead and at least
encouraged it to happen, and and and...

~~~
mikeash
Maybe we should house these prisoners under conditions where they don’t become
suicidal, then.

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Fenrisulfr
While I agree with humane treatment of prisoners, that's a very slippery
argument. Every prison is technically inhumane enough to send some people to
attempt suicide.

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danharaj
Makes you think, doesn't it?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, what's your alternative? The death penalty? Release them?

~~~
mikeash
Make your prisons humane, don’t force-feed anyone, and accept the condemnation
that occurs when one of your prisoners decides to starve himself to death
anyway.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's fair. But you aren't the one I was asking. I get the impression that
that wasn't danharaj's alternative.

~~~
mikeash
I don’t see how “Makes you think, doesn't it?” would imply anything more than
the comment it was in response to.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I read it as implying that all prisons are inherently inhumane, and therefore
that nobody should be in them. But that's one of the problem with drive-by
questions like that - you can't tell for sure what their actual point is.

