Abu Ghraib, Iraq
May 22, 2004 Albuquerque Journal
A senator has made a Department of Justice review critical of operations at the Santa Fe County jail part of the ongoing controversy over America's management of prisons in Iraq. A Department of Justice review in March 2003 had harsh words for management of the Santa Fe County jail by Utah-based Management and Training Corp., criticizing MTC's medical care for inmates and concluding some conditions violated their constitutional rights. Former New Mexico corrections secretary O. Lane McCotter is an MTC executive and was named by Attorney General John Ashcroft to help rebuild Iraq prisons last year. McCotter's role in Iraq prisons-- including at Abu Grhaib, where abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel has sparked a scandal-- has come under congressional scrutiny. Senator Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., in particular, is making an issue of McCotter's work in Iraq and why he was chosen to go there. A statement provided by Schumer's office reviews McCotter's employment history, including his resignation as Utah prison director in 1997 after a mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours strapped to a chair. Schumer's news release also calls attention to the Justice report criticizing MTC's management of the Santa Fe County jail, and notes that the New Mexico Corrections Department also raised concerns about the jail. "While McCotter's company was under state and Department of Justice investigation, Attorney General Ashcroft selected him to serve as one of four civilian advisers to oversee the reconstitution of Iraqi prisons," Schumer noted. "Why Attorney General Ashcroft would send someone with such a checkered record to rebuild Iraq's corrections system is beyond me," Schumer said.
May 21, 2004 Miami Herald
Although several cases of prisoner abuse by civilians in Iraq have been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, the FBI has not yet been asked to investigate any of them, Director Robert Mueller said Thursday. What Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed to indicate that the probe into whether independent contractors or CIA officers killed prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan is moving more slowly than on the military front, where one soldier has already been court-martialed and others have been charged. While the faces of military police have been splashed all over the news, the names of almost all civilians involved -- employees of other government agencies and civilian contractors -- were deleted from Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's report on the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Mueller also said lawyers for the Justice Department and Defense Department are wrestling with jurisdictional issues. Any crimes at the prison would have been committed on foreign soil against foreign citizens, creating complicated legal questions. Also Thursday, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for a Justice Department probe into two members of a U.S. group sent to Iraq in May 2003 to help with the reconstruction of Abu Ghraib. Lane McCotter, a former corrections chief in Utah, and John Armstrong, who led the prison system in Connecticut, were part of a team picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft and others in the Bush administration.
May 21, 2004 New York Times
The use of American corrections executives with abuse accusations in their past to oversee American-run prisons in Iraq is prompting concerns in Congress about how the officials were selected and screened. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, sent a letter yesterday to Attorney General John Ashcroft questioning what he described as the "checkered record when it comes to prisoners' rights" of John J. Armstrong, a former commissioner of corrections in Connecticut. Mr. Armstrong resigned last year after Connecticut settled lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the families of two Connecticut inmates who died after being sent by Mr. Armstrong to a supermaximum security prison in Virginia. In his letter, Mr. Schumer requested that the Justice Department conduct an investigation into the role of American civilians in the Iraqi prison system. Another official, Lane McCotter, who was forced to resign as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an incident in which a mentally ill inmate died after guards left him shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16 hours, was dispatched by Mr. Ashcroft to head a team of Americans to reopen Iraq's prisons. After his resignation in Utah, Mr. McCotter became an executive of a private prison company, the Management and Training Corporation, one of whose jails was strongly criticized in a Justice Department report just a month before the Justice Department sent him to Iraq.
May 12, 2004 The Nation
In 1997 a 29-year-old schizophrenic inmate named Michael Valent was stripped naked and strapped to a restraining chair by Utah prison staff because he refused to take a pillowcase off his head. Shortly after he was released some sixteen hours later, Valent collapsed and died from a blood clot that blocked an artery to his heart. The chilling incident made national news not only because it happened to be videotaped but also because Valent's family successfully sued the State of Utah and forced it to stop using the device. Director of the Utah Department of Corrections, Lane McCotter, who was named in the suit and defended use of the chair, resigned in the ensuing firestorm. Some six years later, Lane McCotter was working in Abu Ghraib prison, part of a four-man team of correctional advisers sent by the Justice Department and charged with the sensitive mission of reconstructing Iraq's notorious prisons, ravaged by decades of human rights abuse. While McCotter left Iraq shortly before the current scandal at Abu Ghraib began and says he had nothing to do with the MPs who committed the atrocities, his very presence there raises serious questions about US handling of the Iraqi prison system. It's bad enough that the Justice Department picked McCotter--whose reputation in Utah was at best controversial and at worst disturbing. But further, the Justice Department hired him less than three months after its own civil rights division released a shocking thirty-six-page report documenting inhumane conditions at a New Mexico jail, run by the company where McCotter is an executive. Then, on May 20, in a case of unfathomable irony, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that McCotter, along with three other corrections experts, had gone to Iraq. The very same day, Justice Department lawyers began their first negotiations with Santa Fe County officials over the extensive changes needed at the jail to avoid legal action.
May 11, 2004 AP
A former New Mexico corrections secretary helped to reopen an Iraqi prison that is now the center of a prisoner abuse controversy. O.L. "Lane" McCotter, who was corrections secretary from the late 1980s to the end of 1990, was in Baghdad from May to September last year overseeing the reconstruction of the Abu Ghraib prison. The prison is where pictures were taken of naked Iraqi prisoners piled on top of one another and positioned by American soldiers in pretend sex acts. McCotter said his primary duty in Iraq was to evaluate the structural status of the prisons. McCotter's tenure in this state ended with some controversy. In October 1988, a court-appointed prison monitor accused state prison officials of erasing a portion of a videotape of a prison disturbance to cover up acts of brutality against inmates.McCotter left New Mexico to run the Utah Corrections Department. But he resigned in 1997, two months after a mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours strapped to a restraining chair. After that incident, McCotter went to work for a Utah-based private prison company, Management & Training Corp., which operates the Santa Fe County jail.
May 10, 2004 Salt Lake Tribune
The Abu Ghraib prison, where U.S. military police were photographed abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners, was rebuilt under the supervision of two former Utah Department of Corrections directors. Gary DeLand and O. Lane McCotter say they were told the project -- financed with money confiscated within Iraq -- would not be used to detain prisoners of war. McCotter has first-hand experience with controversy over how prisoners are treated. He resigned as Utah prison director in May 1997, within two months after a mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours strapped naked to a restraining chair.
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