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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 11/14/10

Torture in US Prisons

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In one tape, nine deputies manhandle Charles Agster, a tiny man, a mentally disturbed drug user, arrested for disturbing the peace. Restrained in a chair, one deputy kneeled on his stomach, "pushing his head forward on to his knees and pulling his arms back to strap his wrists to the chair. Bending someone double for any length of time" can cause "positional asphyxia."

After 15 minutes, he's unconscious. He's already brain dead. Hospitalized, he expired three days later.

Another tape showed guards severely beating a man, Scott Norberg, including Tasering him 19 times and forcing him into a restraint chair. He suffocated.

Other inmates suffered similar abuse, including beatings causing broken bones, a broken neck, and internal injuries. One man died from septicaemia (blood poisoning) after a month in a coma.

In some tapes, sounds are as "unbearable" as images, a Florida prison one showing an inmate lying on a hospital examination table, guards ordering him to get into a wheelchair. "I can't, I can't," he shouts. "It hurts," after which he's Tasered on both hips, screams, but still can't get into the wheelchair.

Guards force him into it, bend his legs painfully, the man shrieking in agony. His lawyer said he's mentally impaired, has a back injury, can't walk, or bend his legs without intense pain. Yet guards try to make him stand and hold a walker. "He falls on the floor, crying in agony." He's Tasered again, lying there out of breath and energy, just moaning.

Other tapes show prisoners handcuffed, brutally beaten, kicked in the head, Tasered, while other guards "just stand around and watch." Photographs collected were also horrific, showing prisoners doused with pepper spray, "then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals." one image revealed a man with "a huge patch of raw skin over his hip." Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A third has deep burns on his buttocks.

"Fire extinguisher" sized pepper spray canisters are used, at times inflicting second degree burns all over prisoners' bodies. For those targeted, "The tell-tale sign is they turn off the ventilation fans in the unit," and shove cardboard in door cracks to make units air-tight.

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