Saturday, February 21, 2015

From Chicago to Gitmo and back again....

No I am not talking about my travels.... I am talking about the Chicago cop who had a reputatation of  using excessive force and torturing people into confessing here in Chicago. He was also in the military reserves-- and as a military reservist he was sent to Guantanamo where he allegedly used those same techniques on men being held at Guantanamo. One of those men was Mohamedou Slahi a current detainee at Guantanamo and coincidently- the man whose book was recently released. I wrote about his book here and here. It was from Slahi's book that Guardian reporter Spencer Ackerman determined that a man who was one of Slahi's main torturers was a Chicago cop with a similar reputation of abusive tactics here in Chicago.

The Guardian has been running a story about this now retired chicago cop, Richard Zuley, and the trail of dubious murder convictions in cases where he was the main detective. Seems he was just what they wanted at Guantanamo along with the likes of Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of join task force-Guantanamo, during Zuley's tenure at Guantanamo.  Just to remind everyone Miller moved on from Guantanamo to lead the activities at Abu Ghraib and the other Iraq prisons around the time when torture was rampant at Abu Ghraib. The Guardian reported at that time that "The US commander in charge of military jails in Iraq, Major General Geoffrey Miller, has confirmed that a battery of 50-odd special "coercive techniques" can be used against enemy detainees. The general, who previously ran the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, said his main role was to extract as much intelligence as possible."   

The introduction to the latest Guardian reporting can be found here. Part one is here. Part two is here.