Court Rules Haiti Prisons Aren't Torture

[Rose Siding]

PHILADELPHIA -- Haitian prisons may be dirty, rat infested and have so little space that prisoners have to sleep standing up, but the mere act of jailing someone in them does not amount to torture, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the federal government may legally deport a convicted drug dealer to Haiti, even though he is likely to be imprisoned there in jails "notorious for their brutal and deplorable conditions that have been compared to those existing on slave ships."

Napoleon Bonaparte Auguste, who is being thrown out of the United States for selling cocaine, had argued that returning him to Haiti would violate an anti-torture treaty.

By the court's own account, temperatures in the tiny, overcrowded cells can reach 105 degrees, and there are often no washbasins or toilets; prisoners must relieve themselves in buckets or plastic bags, which are often not collected for days.

Little food or water is provided. Tuberculosis, AIDS and malnutrition are rampant.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-haitian-prisons,0,3054258.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

There's some interesting precedent as the US debates its own use of torture.

[mike_c]

1. good god, this is terrible....

on edit: this is the first step toward making such conditions acceptable in the U.S.

[ixion]

2. exactly...

took the words right out of my mouth.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

3. Another US coup back in February 2004 while Iraq was burning.

Democratically elected Aristide was toppled for the second time by the US thugs in the White House who dumped 16,000 new M16s into the hands of vicious gangsters waiting to pounce. They even were given body armor while our troops didn't have it in Iraq.

Terror, murderous thugs roaming as death-squads, rotting bodies in the streets, starvation.

All brought to them by the US. Again. With Colin Powell's help.

Then the hurricane came through and killed hundreds in mud slides.

You don't hear much about a US mercy mission and PR campaign for rescuing Haiti in our backyard, do you? Because they are being wiped out and enslaved in sweat shops by the US as a way to occupy the Caribbean bit by bit.

Look out Castro. Look out Chavez. This is why Chavez is buying arms from China.

[Zhade]

4. Thanks for not forgetting.

It distresses me that even some Dems fell for the lies about the coup in Haiti.

[agincourt]

5. Again proof of what you harvest,

When you allow RW swine to pack your courts.