By Deborah Francois, Yale Law School, Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic & Sheng Li, Yale Law School, Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic & Alaina Varvaloucas, Yale Law School, Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at 5:04pm
After a fruitless five-year battle in U.S. federal courts to hold accountable those who unlawfully detained and tortured her son José Padilla, Estela Lebron today sought to have their claims heard by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). You can read today’s filing here.
Padilla is the only American citizen to have been seized on U.S. soil, detained as an enemy combatant, kept in incommunicado military detention, and tortured. Until U.S. courts stop using national security arguments to bar Bush-era torture survivors from seeking remedies for abuses, victims, like Padilla and Lebronwill have to resort to international bodies for any chance at redress.
In recent years, several human rights bodies have faulted the U.S. for failing to live up to its international legal commitments to protect children in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. This week, the U.S. issued its written response to questions raised earlier this year by the United Nations committee charged with implementing the international treaty on the rights of children in armed conflict – and it contains some disturbing news: “Over the last several years the United States has captured more than 200 individuals under the age of 18” and held them in military custody, the U.S. report said.
By Jesselyn McCurdy, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:20am
It's estimated that more than 80,000 prisoners are held in solitary confinement or restricted housing across the United States on any given day. According to a new report released last week by the U.S. General Accounting Office, it's about time the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) started evaluating its use of solitary and monitoring its effects on those prisoners.
The GAO finally released its long-awaited report on the use of solitary confinement in the federal prison system. The report, which was requested by several members of Congress, attempts to solve the mystery surrounding how many prisoners in federal prison are subjected to solitary confinement and how BOP monitors individuals while in solitary.
My name is ______ and I am 23 years old and although my past criminal record isn't at its best, at heart I'm still a great kid!
After being locked up for about six months, I suffered from something many young males would hate to speak on and that's rape. I was raped at Eastern Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian, MS. I was beat brutally and faced several facial and rectum injuries from this attack. I was raped, robbed, and assaulted by several other prisoners.
East Mississippi Correctional Facility is hyper-violent, grotesquely filthy and dangerous. Patients with severe psychiatric disabilities go without basic mental health care. Many prisoners attempt suicide. This video is the story of a young man who succeeded.
By Katie Haas, ACLU Human Rights Program at 1:53pm
In 2008, 66 year old Baerbel Roznowski sought a protection order to keep herself safe from her estranged boyfriend, Chan Kim, who had a history of violence. A court issued the order, which said that Kim must stay away from Roznowski and her home and stop contacting her. The order included instructions for law enforcement explaining that Kim did not speak English well and would need an interpreter to fully understand what was happening, and that Kim would likely react violently against Roznowski when he received news that they would be separated. Unfortunately, the police officer who brought the order to Kim didn't bother to read these instructions. He gave the order to him at Roznowski's home, did not bring an interpreter, and left them together without ensuring that they were safely separated. Just hours later, Baerbel Roznowski was dead. Her boyfriend had stabbed her 18 times, murdering her in her own home.
By Chandra Bhatnagar, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program at 7:07pm
A White House task force set up to combat human trafficking held its annual meeting today, chaired by Secretary of State John Kerry. The cabinet-level group, called the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (PITF) coordinates the U.S. government's efforts to eradicate the phenomenon commonly likened to "modern-day slavery."
