U.S. Prison Torture is Nothing New
What happens in American prisons is a matter of record. If the police are carrying out direct assaults in broad daylight and on film, what is going on behind cell doors where no iPhones are allowed?
Torture, of the brutal variety carried out daily in Israeli prisons on the Palestinians, is nothing new to the government of the United States. Read this early description of WATERBOARDING used to torture Black captives in Georgia prisons 139 years ago:
“Punishment was usually with the lash or the strap, but ingenious guards sometimes devised other forms of torture. One method of ‘watering’ a disorderly prisoner became quite notorious because of its dangerous consequences.”
“Watering” consisted of pouring a stream of water into the mouth of a convict stretched on his back; much of it got into the lungs and at best it produced a fit of choking…(*)
In 1981, Texas sheriff James Parker and three of his deputies were convicted for conspiring to force confessions. The complaint said they
“subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning.”
The sheriff was sentenced to ten years in prison, and the deputies to four years.
May Allah bless ALL the others who are subject to “American justice.”
* [See Blake McKelvey, “Penal Slavery and Southern Reconstruction,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 20, no. 2 (Apr., 1935), p. 175.]
See also this report on “Torture in United States Prisons: Evidence of Human Rights Violations,” by the American Friends Service Committee.