Guantánamo torturer led brutal Chicago regime of shackling and confession

[Dems to Win]

Source: The Guardian

A Chicago detective who led one of the most shocking acts of torture ever conducted at Guantánamo Bay was responsible for implementing a disturbingly similar, years-long regime of brutality to elicit murder confessions from minority Americans.

In a dark foreshadowing of the United States’ post-9/11 descent into torture, a Guardian investigation can reveal that Richard Zuley, a detective on Chicago’s north side from 1977 to 2007, repeatedly engaged in methods of interrogation resulting in at least one wrongful conviction and subsequent cases more recently thrown into doubt following allegations of abuse.

Zuley’s record suggests a continuum between police abuses in urban America and the wartime detention scandals that continue to do persistent damage to the reputation of the United States. Zuley’s tactics, which would be supercharged at Guantánamo when he took over the interrogation of a high-profile detainee as a US Navy reserve lieutenant, included:

• Shackling suspects to police-precinct walls through eyebolts for hours on end.

• Accusations of planting evidence when there was pressure for a high-profile murder conviction.

• Threats of harm to family members of those under interrogation used as leverage.

• Pressure on suspects to implicate themselves and others.

• Threats of being subject to the death penalty if suspects did not confess.

snip....

When Zuley took over the Slahi interrogation in 2003 – his name has gone widely unreported – he designed a plan so brutal it received personal sign-off from then-US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.



Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/guantanamo-torture-chicago-police-brutality

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Thank goodness The Guardian is still doing journalism. Can't imagine reading this in the Chicago Tribune.

If Obama wants to fight violent extremism, maybe he should just go home to Chicago and lay waste to the police department. No need to go halfway around the world to find violent extremists.

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. Well, here's your war on terror/police brutality nexus right here.

I wonder how many other cops are like this guy.

[guillaumeb]

2. Richard Zuley was merely following in the footsteps

of Jon Burge, a convicted felon and former Chicago Police Detective with a long record of torture. Burge was implicated but never convicted of torture, some say thanks to the efforts of former States Attorney and former Mayor of Chicago Richard J. Daley to cover up Burge's crimes.

Burge was implicated in the torture of over 100 black men between 1972 and 1991, so his career and Zuley's overlapped. Does anyone wonder if Burge and Zuley compared notes on favorite methods?

Burge has also cost the City of Chicago over $100 million dollars in payouts to victims who successfully litigated against the City of Chicago for torture.

Burge is also still collecting a $60,000 a year pension in spite of his crimes.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. he was just released to go back to his retirement home

in Florida.

I think that his sentence was way, way, way too short.

[guillaumeb]

5. and the lawsuits will continue

to drain money from Chicago taxpayers. Have to support our men in blue I suppose. How do we put a price on the people whose lives were ruined by these 2 clowns?
Given that the Chicago Police Review Board is handpicked by the Mayor and always takes the Police side, expect more brutality, more lawsuits.

[Scuba]

3. Words fail.

[Darb]

6. Arrrest him and Rumsfeld. Turn them over to the ICC.

Let them punish them.

[Kelvin Mace]

7. And remember, this is the behavior that this country has condoned

by refusing to prosecute war criminals.

This will happen again. Hell, it is probably happening now.

[PSPS]

8. Outside of the Sun Times, no corporate/state media is carrying this, of course.

Here's the Sun Times article:
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news-chicago/7/71/378226/report-former-chicago-police-detective-accused-guantanamo-torture

[Dems to Win]

9. thanks for the link. This should be a big national story, not just in Chicago n/t

[Judi Lynn]

10. It would be helpful learning who decided to add this evil man to the personnel at Guantanamo.

This snip from the linked Guardian article also stood out, concerning Zuley's time as a cop in Chicago:

Lathierial Boyd, convicted in 1990 of murder, accuses Zuley in a federal civil-rights lawsuit of planting evidence and withholding crucial details.

Boyd told the Guardian that Zuley had a racial animus as well. “No nigger is supposed to live like this,” he remembered Zuley telling him after the detective searched his expensive loft.

Apparently he has always felt there were enough oither monsters around who would condone his behavior. What a nightmare for all good people.

[Jefferson23]

11. Personal sign off from Rumsfeld...what a shock...I wish. Who are the savages, again? n/t