Free Republic

Hamas and Fatah are preparing to release the lion's share of their respective 'political prisoners' by the end of the year. “By the end of the year, all political detainees will be released except those who wish to remain in custody for special reasons related to their security both in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip,” the PA-affiliated Ma'an News Agency quoted PA negotiator Munib al-Masri on Saturday. The move comes on the heels of reconciliation talks between the rival factions in Cairo on Thursday that resulted in an announcement that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terror factions...

EXCLUSIVE    Perv lags getting paid to do rehab Fury at paedo jail ‘bribes’   Courses ... inmates can even pick up the cash by not attending the sessions   JAILED paedophiles are being PAID to take courses inside to stop them offending. Under prison rules, sick inmates who attend "offender behaviour programmes" get wages the same as if they have a job in jail. They can even pick up the cash by NOT attending the sessions — if they show they were willing to go but there were no spaces available. Last night Lyn Costello, of campaigning group Mothers Against...

Two female Afghan prisoners want to tell their stories. One is serving 12 years in jail for being raped; the other is in prison for running away from an abusive husband. With the help of the European Union, a London-based filmmaker made a documentary in late 2010 that exposed the plight of abused women in Afghanistan but the EU has now backtracked on the project. It wants to block the release of the film “In-Justice: The Story of Afghan Women in Jail” as it might upset “relations with the justice institutions.” Clementine Malpas, who was given financial aid for making...

The Gaza Strip and West Bank gave a jubilant welcome on Tuesday to hundreds of Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held for five years by the enclave's Islamist rulers, Hamas. Fire-crackers, klaxons and cheering carloads of flag-waving young men raised the noise level steadily in Gaza city as thousands converged on a central square for a mass rally with speeches scheduled by Hamas leaders and well-known militants just liberated in the swap mediated by Egypt. (Snip) But violence erupted when the Israelis announced over loud speakers that the prisoners

Amnesty International issued a press release today. Israel-Hamas prisoner swap casts harsh light on detention practices of all sidesGilad Shalit was held captive for five years by Palestinian armed groups The prisoner exchange involving Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and 477 Palestinian prisoners highlights the need for the humane treatment of all detainees in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Amnesty International said today. Obviously it wants to show equivalence. God forbid it should criticize only Hamas. It was not a "prisoner exchange". It was an outrageous ransom paid for a hostage. It only mentions the 477 terrorists that were...

LOS ANGELES — Facing an unprecedented order from the Supreme Court to decrease its inmate population by 11,000 over the next three months and by 34,000 over the next two years, California prisons last week began to shift inmates to county jails and probation officers, starting what many believe will be a fundamental and far-reaching change in the nation’s largest corrections system. Last spring, the Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding and poor conditions in state prisons violated inmates’ constitutional rights and, in a first, ordered a state to rapidly decrease its inmate population. Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature approved...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A dozen inmates were sickened, including three in critical condition, in a suspected botulism outbreak after they drank alcohol brewed inside a prison cell, Utah health officials said Wednesday. Eight male prisoners who were hospitalized had exhibited botulism symptoms and preliminary tests were positive for the disease in two of the men, said Dr. Dagmar Vitek, the medical director of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department.

A chilling look inside the minds of female prisoners unfolds on Thursday with the première of the new TLC show, Prison Diaries. The first episode of the series focuses on Emilia Carr, one of just 63 women on death row in the U.S. Carr is seen in ankle chains and handcuffs, led by a burly, fully-armed female guard as she leaves her cell. She wears bright orange overalls and trainers, her long, dark hair allowed to fall around her hunched shoulders.

Sheriff Grady Judd said the end of free underwear will save an estimated $45,000 a year in operation costs. Judd in a statement said, "$45,000 is one person's job we're saving. If inmates want to wear underwear in jail, they can buy it, just like hard-working Polk County citizens do." This isn't the first time the sheriff has invoked creative cost cuts. He eliminated peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cornbread, coffee, juice and fresh milk from the jail menu a few years ago, saying if inmates wanted to eat those things they should stop breaking the law.

Hamas announced Sunday that all its members currently sitting in Israeli prisons will launch a hunger strike on Monday, after Israel transferred senior Hamas officials to solitary confinement. A Hamas spokesman said Sunday that the purpose of the hunger strike was to demand the release of Yihyeh Sanwar, who is considered the most senior Hamas official in prison, and his brother Mohammad, who was among those responsible for the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. According to the Hamas spokesman, Sanwar suffers from serious health problems.

Dr. Archibald Rudolph Reiss Aleksandra's Note: Three proverbs capture the essential nature of how things work in the Balkans. They are: "History repeats itself", "The first casualty of war is truth", and "What's old is new again". The more one researches the history of the Balkans the more one becomes struck with just how relevant the past is to today's events. The unfortunate thing about this phenomenon is that those in power and the policymakers and the historians and journalists who evaluate what is going on presently never seem to pay attention to the fact that the same lies keep...

An appellate ruling that correction officials have acted with “deliberate indifference” by denying female hormone therapy to a transgendered child rapist is giving new hope to a convicted killer suing for a state-funded sex-change operation. A lawyer for inmate Michelle Lynne Kosilek filed a plea Thursday in his decade-old case before U.S. District Court Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf, saying a May 20 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston for inmate Sandy Jo Battista supports Kosilek’s similar claims of cruel and unusual punishment by the Department of Correction. The ruling states DOC can no longer use inmate...

A former prisoner of a Chinese labor camp claims guards are forcing detainees to play online games as part of a huge money-making scam. Liu Dali told The Guardian website that guards traded the credits inmates built up playing games such as World of Warcraft for money. "Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor," he said. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5000-6000rmb a day. "We didn't see any of the money....

Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl of Sun Valley, Idaho went missing on June 30, 2009 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. He is currently being held in an unknown location, possibly moved to Ghazni Province or smuggled across the border to Pakistan making the logistics of rescue even more difficult. The Taliban has released several videos where Bergdahl is reading forced statements in violation of international law. In exchange for his release, they are demanding $1 million dollars, the release of 21 Afghan prisoners most of whom are held in Guantanamo Bay, as well as the freeing Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani terrorist...

Did you catch any of this over there, Jimmeh? Based on new satellite imagery and personal interviews of former inmates and guards, Amnesty International describes conditions in the Nork's political prison camps as "horrific". And as the world's only heriditary communist dictatorship prepares for a transfer of power -and a potential period of instability- the Gulag-type camps appear to be growing in size... Amnesty International believes the camps have been in operation since the 1950s, yet only three people are ever known to have escaped Total Control Zones and managed to leave North Korea. About 30 are known to...

Prison guards might soon test an invisible laserlike beam that triggers a painful burning sensation as a new way to break up fights between inmates. The project does not yet have the green light from its federal sponsor. But should it go forward, officials plan to set up the beam-emitting machine, known as Assault Intervention Device (AID) in a dormitory at the North County Correctional Facility at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, Calif. "This device allows us to stop a fight or lessen the severity of it without inflicting injury," said Cmdr. Bob Osborne of the Los Angeles County...

Hey Boehner and McConnell... you got the cojones to  bring this character in for a few questions...? In the wake of the ever-outgoing Charles Manson getting his cell-phone taken away by ruthless class-oppressors at Corcoran State Prison, hardcore lib kooks like Van Jones, Noam Chomsky, and Professor Michelle Alexander have signed a "statement of solidarity" with striking Georgia inmates as they ramp-up a racially-charged "prisoners' rights" offensive in this country... and with a little help from their friends: ...“mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow,” ... “Like the old Jim Crow, this system serves to perpetuate institutionalized racism, economic inequality,...

More than 140 prisoners escaped from a prison near the U.S. border on Friday, media said, the latest breach of Mexico's notoriously insecure jails that are helping to feed a violent drug war... on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo across from Laredo, Texas. In September, 85 prisoners escaped from jail in the nearby border city of Reynosa. Authorities discovered in July that prison officials had allowed convicts out of jail in northwestern Durango state to carry out revenge attacks before returning to cells for the night.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Treasury mistakenly sent more than 20 million dollars in stimulus payments to dead people and prisoners as part of an effort to jolt the US economy out of recession, an investigation has found. The 2009 American Recovery and Investment Act authorized one-time 250 dollar payments to about 52 million people, totalling 13 billion dollars. But an inspector general's investigation found that more than 71,000 of the checks -- worth 18 million dollars -- went out to people who had died. ... "Inaccurate payments are unacceptable," said Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration,...

The Israeli military is investigating a video which has surfaced on the internet showing a soldier dancing around a Palestinian woman prisoner who is bound and blindfolded. The video shows a soldier gyrating to music as the woman sits against the wall with her hands tied and her eyes bound. The video has been posted on YouTube and has been broadcast on Israeli television. The Palestinian Authority has condemned the video, calling it deeply offensive to the dignity of women. The Israeli army says military police have launched an inquiry and such an investigation will become standard practice in all...

LIMA (Reuters) – An ancient ceremonial ground used by a Pre-Columbian civilization for human sacrifices has been uncovered on Peru's northern coast, archaeologists said on Thursday. The discovery appears to reinforce prevailing theories about a ceremony known as "the presentation" that was carried out by the Moche people, an agricultural civilization that flourished between 100 B.C. and 800 A.D. Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Bruning Museum in Peru and a leader of the dig, said the ceremonial site likely hosted ritual killings of prisoners of war. Photographs taken at the site show more than half a dozen skeletons...

Rats and diseases infested Cuban prison cells so badly that some inmates tried to kill themselves and other did themselves harm, according to freed political prisoners who spoke Thursday in Spain. Those who spoke were among 11 political prisoners released this week and flown to Spain to start new lives. At a press conference in Madrid, they painted a squalid picture of the prison conditions they had endured. "The hygiene and health situations in prisons throughout the island of Cuba are not terrible, they are worse than terrible," freed dissident Julio Cesar Galvez said. "We had to live with rats...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- More than 1,200 prison inmates, including 241 serving life sentences, defrauded the government of $9.1 million in tax credits reserved for first-time homebuyers, according to a Treasury Department report released Wednesday. Treasury's inspector general also found that thousands of people filed multiple claims or made claims outside the allotted time period. In all, more than $28 million was improperly doled out. The Internal Revenue Service program at issue is meant to stimulate the housing market by giving tax credits of as much as $8,000 to qualifying first-time home buyers. "Additional controls are necessary to address erroneous...

Wives and mothers of political prisoners' in Cuba have again been prevented from marching in Havana. Six women - known as the Ladies in White - were surrounded by an angry mob of pro-government supporters and then pushed off the street into a park. The women stood silently for several hours as the crowd shouted insults and pro-revolutionary slogan

Bracing for an influx of newly released prisoners, East Bay leaders are working with social services groups to prevent the former inmates from returning to lives of crime. The concern has reached a critical point because state legislation has relaxed restrictions on parolees and led to the early release of prisoners considered low risk. The state sought the changes to save money and to ease prison overcrowding and health care problems. The state aims to decrease the prison population by tens of thousands over the next two to three years. Though there is no way to know exactly how many...

SNIPPET: "The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter in Washington State is seeking religious Muslim volunteers to work with state prison inmates. That has veteran corrections official Patrick Dunleavy concerned that the program could result in the radicalization of prisoners and create security problems. It's not the presence of Muslim volunteers, but the track record of the people and organization involved." Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/1816/cair-targets-washington-state-prisons

No one should imagine that American missionary Robert Park is getting the same relatively benign treatment at the hands of his North Korean "hosts" as the two American women who were held in the North for 140 days last year.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. has released a long-secret list of some 645 detainees held at a military base in Afghanistan. The identities and descriptions of the detainees at Bagram air base had been sought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Washington state will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn a surprising federal court ruling that tossed out the state's 120-year-old prohibition against voting by incarcerated felons, Attorney General Rob McKenna said today. The ruling, handed down Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S> Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle, found that Washington's criminal-justice system was so "infected" with racial discrimination that a ban on felon voting violated civil-rights protections. The state hoped to have the case heard during the U.S. Supreme Court's fall session, McKenna told reporters at a hastily-arranged news conference at...

Note: The following text is a quote: Some Guantanamo Detainees to Move to Illinois Prison By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2009 – President Barack Obama’s administration plans to transfer a limited number of detainees held at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in rural western Illinois, senior administration officials said here today. The federal government plans to acquire Thomson Correctional Center, a 10-year-old maximum security prison in Thomson, Ill., a farming community about 150 miles west of Chicago, officials said in a background briefing. The administration would need to work...

Currently, the constitution allows prisoners to perform work for governmental agencies during their prison sentence, but the amendment would allow them to volunteer for religious, charitable and educational groups as well. Letting inmates work for non-profits was common practice for jails across the state until the state Commission of Correction determined it was unconstitutional about three years ago, state Sheriffs' Association Counsel Thomas Mitchell said. The nonprofit work could be used as an incentive for good behavior.

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s controversial program to charge inmates for rent, haircuts, medical visits and high school equivalency tests raised $750,000, but outraged inmate advocates who said the fees violated their constitutional rights and amounted to an unlawful tax. Five years after a judge struck down the program - ruling that county sheriffs do not have the authority to charge such fees - Hodgson is reviving the proposal. The state’s highest court will hear arguments in Hodgson’s appeal today. When he initially imposed the fees in 2002, Hodgson said he believed they could help teach inmates to accept responsibility...

Even as some Americans await the arrival of their swine flu vaccines, the Pentagon has decided to vaccinate both soldiers and terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There was no word Wednesday on when the the first vaccines would reach the remote base in southeast Cuba. But U.S. military there were notified late last week that service members would get their H1N1 virus vaccinations first. Private contractors and sailors' wives and children could get theirs afterward ``as the supply permits.'' And that means the 221 war on terror captives would also be vaccinated first, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt,...

Being Supreme Leader of the Free World is a tough job; but someone's got to do it. Enter Barack Hussein Obama. Mmm....mmm...mm. When he's not pushing Obamacare, bashing FOX News for linking him to ACORN and other radical associations, hiding in the closet on gay rights, what's he doing? Why he's busy taking heat from all sides in the Afghanistan debate. I guess you just can't please all the people, all of the time. Or in this case, any of the people on all sides of the debate. Health care legislation has been hard for President Obama, but Afghanistan...

CONVICTED criminals are being employed as telemarketers to cold-call people as part of a radical new prison employment program. But those called will have no idea they are talking to an inmate and the State Government will not say which organisations are using the convicts as part of a confidentiality deal. The program is designed to prepare women prisoners from Windsor's low and medium-security Dillwynia Correctional Centre for life on the outside, training them for work and stopping them from reoffending. However it is also being used as a low-cost way for companies to get cheap telemarketing work and for...

Alcohol hand gel meant to combat swine flu has been banned from a prison after inmates became embroiled in a drunken brawl after drinking it. Hand gels supplied to a prison to combat the risk of swine flu have been removed after inmates realised it contained alcohol and began drinking it to try to get drunk. At least one prisoner at HMP The Verne on Portland, Dorset, was found intoxicated. The Prison Service confirmed that this case was being investigated but meanwhile antibacterial gel pumps had been removed as a "precautionary measure". Andy Fear, a member of the Verne's Prison...

California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass plans to strip the most controversial provisions from a Senate-approved plan that would have trimmed the state's prison population by 27,000 inmates. The Assembly version would keep about 10,000 more inmates behind bars and leave the state with a new, nearly $200 million budget hole, Bass said early Friday. Bass said the new plan -- to be considered Monday -- would do away with proposals by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to allow home detention with electronic monitoring for inmates with less than 12 months to serve, who are over age 60 or who are medically incapacitated....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration plans to transfer six prisoners abroad from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. official said on Wednesday, part of the effort to close the controversial facility by early 2010. The detainees include those previously ordered released by U.S. courts or whose release has been approved through the Obama administration's review process, a Justice Department official said, declining to give further details. The administration notified Congress around August 6-7 of the planned moves, starting a 15-day waiting period before the transfers can begin. One, Mohammed Jawad, could be sent back to Afghanistan as...

"17,000 prisoners were freed after amnesty and commutation of punishment term of a number of prisoners by the Supreme Leader," State Prisons Organization's Deputy Director for Management and Resource Development Mohammad Ali Zanjirehi told FNA on Friday. "40 percent of the country's inmates, who account for around 68,000 people, were liable to the amnesty," Zanjirei said, adding that 17,000 out of the 68,000 inmates have been freed and the rest have enjoyed commutation of their terms or will be granted leaves in final months of their incarceration.

According to news received by the International Committee against Executions, 29 people are to be executed tomorrow, Saturday, in Ghezal Hesar prison in Karaj. It has been reported that the 29 have been separated from other prisoners. There is no information on their charges. The executions are being carried out in order to intimidate people and is directed at the protesting people of Iran.

LANSING, Mich. -- Empty Michigan prisons could become home to hundreds of California inmates if a deal can be struck. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent a letter Monday to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally offering space for some of the inmates California is running out of room to house to Michigan. Download: Ganholm Letter To Schwarzenegger Michigan plans to close two prisons by the end of September. They are the Standish Maximum Correctional facility about 145 miles northwest of Detroit and a medium-security prison in Muskegon, about 45 miles northwest of Grand Rapids. Michigan could save the jobs of about...

Tens Of Thousands Pennsylvania Prison Inmates ... ... will still be paid for the jobs they do at state correctional institutions even as the people who guard them and see to their welfare run the risk of going unpaid in the event of a budget impasse this summer, The Morning Call has learned. Concerns about public safety helped drive the decision to continue paying the 31,175 inmates who do everything from serve meals to sweep cell-blocks at the state’s 27 correctional institutions. They’re paid 19 cents to 42 cents an hour for their labors, spokespeople for Gov. Ed Rendell and...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered the release of 'all' Hamas prisoners, including those held on security charges, a senior aide told al-Jazeera from Ramallah on Monday. Azzam Ahmed, the head of the parliamentary bloc of Abbas’ Fatah party charged with holding reconciliation talks with the rival Hamas movement ruling Gaza, told the Doha-based channel the release would get underway in the coming days. The Palestinian Ma’an news agency, however, quoted sources close to Abbas as saying Hamas prisoners would only be released on “condition they do not pose a threat to general security and law and order.” Abbas had...

NORRISTOWN — When Wendy Lavin discovered that jail cell writings from her daughter's killer were for sale on the Internet, she was horrified. "I was disgusted. I felt sick to my stomach," said Lavin, whose 20-year-old daughter, Jennifer Louise Still, was stabbed to death by serial killer John Charles Eichinger in 1999. "I could not believe that after everything I had been through with the murder and trial, it was like it was happening all over again. I could not believe that something so horrific was going on and I wasn't aware of it." Lavin discovered the Web site when...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- A session of the Guantanamo war crimes court that began Sunday will likely show the difficulties President Barack Obama faces in changing the system and closing the prison by January. The case in question, of a Canadian charged with killing an American soldier, is stalled by infighting among lawyers. Other defendants have even more complex legal issues, and officials say the U.S. may have to choose between delaying Guantanamo's closure or quickly finding somewhere else to hold the trials. "I don't think they'll get a single trial done by January," said Michael Berrigan,...

HARDIN, Mont. (AP) - On Capitol Hill, politicians are dead-set against transferring some of the world's most feared terrorists from Guantanamo to prisons on U.S. soil. But at City Hall in this impoverished town on the Northern Plains, the attitude is: Bring 'em on. Hardin, a dusty town of 3,400 people so desperate that it built a $27 million jail a couple of years ago in the vain hope it would be a moneymaker, is offering to house hundreds of Gitmo detainees at the brand-new, never-used institution. The medium-security jail was conceived as a holding facility for drunks and other...

In California's latest doom-and-gloom announcement, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Department of Finance on Tuesday proposed closing the state's main welfare program, releasing nonviolent prisoners one year early and shuttering up to 80 percent of state parks to shrink the state's $24.3 billion budget deficit. Schwarzenegger wants $5.6 billion in new cuts to replace a like amount of borrowing he proposed in his budget plan earlier this month. The Republican governor previously asked for more than $15 billion in other savings by slashing schools and Medi-Cal, laying off 5,000 state workers and borrowing money from local governments. The governor's plan would release...

With the Democratic no-go on Guantánamo (I'll leave it to the better informed to ascertain the degree that the Democratic Congress came to the rescue of an embarrassed Obama administration and cut off funding for the shutdown to allow him an out with the now familiar excuse of "they did it — not me, who keeps promises"), I think we now have come to the end to the five-year left-wing attack theme of Bush "shredding the Constitution." Except for the introduction of euphemisms and a few new ballyhooed but largely meaningless protocols, there is no longer a Bush-did-it argument. The...

WASHINGTON – A federal judge ruled on Thursday that prisoners in the war on terror can use U.S. civilian courts to challenge their detention at a military air base in Afghanistan. U.S. District Judge John Bates turned down the United States' motion to deny the right to three foreign detainees at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their detention in court. But the government had argued that it did not apply to those in Afghanistan.

Israeli Minister: "Two-Thirds of Freed Hamas Prisoners Returned to Terror and Murdered Israelis" Voice of Israel Radio-Hebrew - via dailyalert.org