The dark truth about closing the Guantánamo Bay prison

Broken Prison Barsoriginally by: Alternet
published: 20 January 2022

It’s now more than 20 years later and that American offshore symbol of mistreatment and injustice, the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is still open. In fact, as 2021 ended, New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg, who has covered that notorious prison complex since its first day, reported on the Pentagon’s plans to build a brand-new prefab courthouse at that naval base.

It’s intended to serve as a second, even more secret facility for holding the four remaining trials of war-on-terror detainees and is scheduled to be ready “sometime in 2023.”

Continue reading

Supreme Court declines case of Troy Davis

Save Troy Davisoriginally by: The Christian Science Monitor
published: 28th March 2011

The US Supreme Court on dismissed the appeal of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, whose loud and persistent claims of innocence attracted the support of death penalty opponents around the world and forced a series of extra hearings to investigate his case. In the end, court after court rejected his pleas.

On Monday the high court, without comment, dismissed three appeals filed on Mr. Davis’s behalf. The action opens the way for Georgia authorities to set an execution date. Davis was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1989 shooting death of off-duty Savannah Police Officer Mark MacPhail. He’s been on death row since 1991.

Continue reading

‘Kidney sisters’ leave Mississippi prison

Free the Scott Sisters
Free the Scott Sisters

originally by: BBC News
7th January 2011

Two imprisoned sisters whose sentences were dropped on the condition that one donate her kidney to the other have been released from jail in Mississippi. The pair, who had been in jail for 16 years, are moving to the US state of Florida, where their family lives.

Jamie Scott requires daily dialysis, which costs the state roughly $200,000 (£129,000) per year, officials said. She and her sister Gladys Scott were convicted in 1994 of taking part in a robbery that netted a mere $11 (£7).

Continue reading