Fahad
Hashmi Joins 1,400 Others in the Solitary Confinement
Capital of the World
29 November 2010By James Ridgeway and Jean
Casella
A letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder today by
several civil rights groups expresses "urgent concern
about Syed Fahad Hashmi's conditions of confinement."
The letter, from the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR), the Council on American-Islamic Relations of
New York (CAIR-NY), and Educators for Civil Liberties,
and Muslim Justice Initiative, reads in part:
For nearly three years before his case was scheduled
to go to trial in April 2010, Syed Fahad Hashmi was
held in solitary confinement under "Special
Administrative Measures" (SAMs), which added a severe
additional layer of isolation to his confinement.
Numerous civil liberties organizations, human rights
groups and concerned citizens called attention to the
severity and inhumanity of these pretrial conditions
of confinement. These included a Statement of Concern
signed by 550 academics and writers...and weekly
vigils outside the prison in lower Manhattan where
Syed Hashmi was held.
Facing four counts and a possible 70-year sentence,
Syed Hashmi accepted a plea bargain on the eve of
trial and pleaded guilty to a single terrorism charge
of "conspiracy to provide material support" for
allowing an acquaintance to stay in his apartment with
a suitcase of waterproof socks and rain ponchos which
the acquaintance then took to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
For this, he was sentenced to 15 years. Over the
summer he was moved to the high-security prison at the
Florence Correctional Center in Florence, Colorado. He
remains in solitary confinement and under SAMs.
Scholarly and medical research has overwhelmingly
demonstrated the severe health effects of prolonged
solitary confinement; military officials and Vietnam
veterans including Senator John McCain have testified
to its damaging results. The use of prolonged solitary
confinement puts the United States increasingly out of
step with world opinion and is an affront to American
values of civil rights and humane treatment. Other
people convicted of terrorism-related charges,
including John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, and Matt
Hale have seen their SAMs not renewed. We ask the U.S.
Department of Justice to not renew Syed Hashmi's SAMs
and to end his solitary confinement.
As the letter describes, the Hashmi's conditions of
confinement were at one time the focus of high-profile
protests--in part because he had not yet been
convicted of any crime, but perhaps also because he
was being held in these torturous conditions right in
the middle of downtown Manhattan. Now Hashmi has been
placed in the solitary confinement capital of the
world, where there will be no candlelight vigils for
him or for any of the hundreds of other human being
living in similar conditions.
As we noted in an earlier post, the complex of federal
and state prisons in and around the area around Cañon
City, Colorado, contains some 1,400 solitary
confinement cells. Hashmi shares ADX Florence, the
most secure prison in the federal system, with about
400 others. Even if the Justice Department lifts his
Special Administrative Measures--which impose
additional restrictions on communications and
visitation--he will be held in extreme isolation in a
prison described by one former warden as "a clean
version of hell."
Hashmi, as the letter states, is subject to this
punishment because he consorted with someone who sent
socks to Al Qaeda. This may seem like an extreme case,
but it is not an isolated one. Among the 1,400 other
men in solitary confinement in Cañon City, many are
there for such offenses as fighting with other inmates
or guards, being identified as gang members, trying to
escape, having contraband, or failing to follow
orders. Still others are there, effectively, because
they are Muslims, because they suffer from mental
illness, or because they are children.* Any of these
things can condemn a prisoner to spending months or
years living in conditions that much of the world
considers torture.
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