Designed to Intimidate

Fyodor Dostoevsky once said if you want to understand a nation, look into its prisons. It has also been said that a society is only as healthy as the way it treats dissidents. A look into U.S. prisons to determine the health of our society reveals that the United States has the highest rate of incarceration of any industrialized country and that there are U.S. citizens behind bars for their political beliefs or actions.

The U.S. government routinely denies that it holds political prisoners. But at an International Tribunal on Political Prisoners in the United States, held December 6-10, 1990, in New York City, lawyers, political activists, and former prisoners testified that the U.S. government uses its prisons to suppress internal dissent, and a panel of eight international judges ruled that the United States is jailing people because of their politics, in violation of international law.

Freedom Now!, an amnesty group for U.S. political prisoners and one of 88 organizers of the tribunal, currently recognizes more than 100 political prisoners in this country. Imprisoned political activists come from a range of movements -- from Native Americans defending their treaty rights to members of the Black Liberation Army -- and use differing tactics in their struggles, and issues around the use of violence have led to debates about how such prisoners should be supported. But one thing all imprisoned activists have in common -- and one thing political and human rights groups agree on -- is that the U.S. government has abused its legal system to get them behind bars, and that, once incarcerated, they are singled out for brutal treatment.

"These are people working for social justice, challenging the U.S. government, and they are being persecuted," asserts Rev. Michael Yasutake, director of the Prisoners of Conscience Project of the National Council of Churches (NCC).

Most political activists in U.S. prisons come from oppressed groups (mainly African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans) that have formed movements to defend their rights or to achieve the self-determination they believe the U.S. government has denied them. Also imprisoned are white North Americans who have acted in solidarity with oppressed peoples movements or opposed U.S. foreign and nuclear policies. (Plowshares disarmament defendants have received sentences as long as 18 years.) Members of the sanctuary movement, draft resisters, and conscientious objectors have also served time.

Freedom Now! defines a political prisoner as someone who made a conscious decision to fight against social injustice and who has been incarcerated as a result of their actions or beliefs. They include people who have engaged in acts of "armed struggle" (this usually connotes acts of protest such as bombing symbolic, unoccupied targets, but has also included using weapons to resist capture, free companions from prison or, rarely, rob banks). Amnesty International (AI) recognizes as "prisoners of conscience" only people imprisoned for their beliefs who have not advocated violence. AI recently adopted its first U.S. prisoner of conscience since 1987: conscientious objector George Morse, who has been jailed for refusing to ship military supplies to the Persian Gulf.

U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS are one legacy of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which operated officially until 1971 and unofficially thereafter. COINTELPRO was designed to disrupt and destroy progressive movements, and included infiltration, propaganda, and the targeting of leaders for physical violence and imprisonment. COINTELPRO tactics led to the jailing of Chicano, Native American, and black activists, particularly members of the Black Panther (BP) Party.

According to Bob Boyle, a lawyer who has defended black activists, in the 1960s police routinely jailed BP members on minor violations, such as selling party newspapers. Party leaders were charged with more serious violations (usually killing a police officer) and given long prison terms. Several cases were clear frame-ups, and almost every case was fraught with judicial irregularities. An FBI directive from this period urged that black activists be "arrested on every possible charge" and a later directive added tellingly, "It is immaterial whether the facts substantiate the charge." Boyle estimates that 20 BP members or former members remain in prison.

The most egregious Panther frame-up was that of Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, who has served 19 years for a murder circumstances indicate he could not have committed. In 1972 Pratt was convicted of murdering a woman in Santa Monica, California. Yet according to lawyer Forrest Martin, witnesses have testified that at the time the murder was committed, Pratt was at a Panther meeting in Oakland, 350 miles away.

Pratt and the Panthers were under heavy FBI surveillance at the time, but the electronic surveillance data for the days surrounding the murder have mysteriously disappeared. Ex-FBI agent Wesley Swearinger has testified that he believes tapes showing Pratt's presence at the Oakland meeting were removed from the files to frame Pratt.

The FBI infiltrated Pratt's defense team and withheld from his defense and the jury evidence indicating his innocence, including the fact that the murder victim's husband originally identified another man as the killer, and the identity of the main witness against Pratt as a paid FBI informant.

Pratt learned these facts from his prison cell; through the Freedom of Information Act, he obtained 7,000 pages of FBI documents showing that his conviction was part of a conspiracy to destroy black leaders. Amnesty International has acknowledged that Pratt was a victim of government repression and called for an inquiry into his case. According to Pratt's defense committee, his original jurors have said that if hidden evidence had been known to them they would have voted not guilty. Yet courts have continually denied Pratt's requests for a retrial.

Pratt's case is chillingly reminiscent of that of American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Leonard Peltier. In 1975, a firefight between federal troops and AIM members on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation left an Indian man and two FBI agents dead. Although it was impossible to tell who fired the shots, the FBI charged Peltier and two others with the murder of the agents, and tried Peltier's codefendants in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where they were acquitted.

According to codefendant Bob Robideau, the FBI "then conspired to convict Peltier." Federal prosecutors got the trial site moved to Fargo, North Dakota, where, Robideau notes, there was a climate of hostility toward AIM among townspeople, jurors, and judge. "In our trial we were allowed to show the jury the tactics the FBI used against our movement," Robideau explained. "Peltier was not allowed to present that evidence."

According to the Peltier defense committee, documents obtained since Peltier's trial have revealed that prosecutors used falsified ballistic evidence and perjured testimony to get him extradited from Canada and sentenced to two life terms. Myrtle Poor Bear, a psychologically unbalanced Lakota woman, was held by FBI agents for more than a month and coerced into testifying against Peltier. She signed three mutually contradictory affidavits and has since recanted her testimony. A U.S. attorney involved with the case has admitted that the government doesn't know who shot the FBI agents, and AI (as well as members of the U.S. Congress and Canada's Parliament) has called for a new trial, yet appeals courts have denied Peltier a retrial. In February, a federal judge again turned down Peltier's appeal without ruling on the merits of his claims.

Pratt's and Peltier's cases are not isolated outrages; they reflect a consistent pattern of judicial abuse against political activists. At the New York tribunal, Michael Deutsch, a lawyer who has represented political defendants, outlined tactics the government uses to subvert the legal system to its political ends in a process Deutsch and others believe has made the justice system more repressive for everyone.

FALSIFYING EVIDENCE AND TESTIMONY

In 1973, Black Panther Dhoruba Bin Wahad was convicted of wounding two police officers and sentenced to 25 years to life. In the years following, Bin Wahad and his lawyers obtained documents revealing that he had been targeted by the FBI's "Newkill" plan to round up and jail underground BP members. Bin Wahad's lawyer, Bob Boyle, told Sojourners that key evidence was suppressed in his case, such as the fact that the main witness against him had originally called investigators to say that Bin Wahad was innocent. This witness was then held under 24-hour guard at a hotel in New York City while FBI agents pressured her into changing her story. The New York Supreme Court recently overturned Bin Wahad's conviction and released him after 19 years in prison.

Chicano activist Alvaro Hernandez was convicted of murder in 1975, but maintains his innocence. Hernandez's wife Elisabeth told Sojourners that during his trial, crime lab reports were concealed and the prosecution's key witness was given money and a car. To convict BP leaders Herman Bell, Jalil Bottom, and Albert Nuh Washington, a New York police ballistics expert perjured himself, according to the defendants' lawyer Brian Glick. The prosecutor in this case has admitted that the main witness against the defendants was tortured by New Orleans police and threatened with further torture unless he cooperated. Two other witnesses were jailed and threatened with losing custody of their children if they did not testify for the prosecution.

Defendants often uncover suppressed evidence years after their conviction, but retrials and releases like Bin Wahad's are rare. And frame-up tactics have been used to put activists on death row.

In 1974, Gary Tyler, a 16-year-old black student leader against segregation, was convicted of shooting a white student in the midst of racial tensions in Destrehan, Louisiana. A school bus Tyler was riding with other black students was attacked by a white mob throwing rocks and bottles. During the attack a shot fired from somewhere left a white student dead. Although no gun was found on the bus or on any of the black students, Tyler was taken to the sheriff's station, where he says deputies beat him and tried to get him to confess to the shooting.

According to Tyler's defense committee, evidence pointing to his innocence (that the gun police allegedly found on the bus hours later actually came from the police firing range, that students had seen a man with a gun in the crowd, that the bus driver testified no gun was fired from within the bus) was concealed. The state's star witness, a 14-year-old girl with a history of mental instability, has recanted her testimony and said that deputies told her she would lose her baby and be jailed if she didn't testify against Tyler. Tyler remains on death row.

MULTIPLE TRIALS AND DOUBLE JEOPARDY

Federal prosecutors often put political defendants through as many trials as necessary to get a conviction. The Epiphany Plowshares activists were put through four trials; Bin Wahad and other Panther leaders through three.

In 1988, Eddie Hatcher, a Tuscorara Indian from Robeson County, North Carolina, took the desperate step of occupying the offices of the Robesonian newspaper to ask for federal protection and an investigation into the Robeson County Sheriff's Department, which Hatcher believed was behind death threats he was receiving. According to Bobby Castillo, Political Prison Project coordinator of the International Indian Treaty Council, Hatcher had uncovered in detail the involvement of local businesspeople and law enforcement officials in the cocaine trade in Robeson County.

Instead of investigating the cocaine connection, the federal government tried Hatcher for hostage taking and conspiracy (he was the first person tried under Reagan's "Anti-Terrorist Act"), but a jury acquitted him. Hatcher was then reindicted for the same actions by the state of North Carolina. Attempts were being made on his life, and in terror Hatcher pled guilty.

It is not uncommon for activists to be sentenced twice for the same actions, in clear "double jeopardy." Such moves pile years onto defendants' sentences, ensuring that they will spend their lives in jail. A group of seven activists against U.S. foreign policy in Central America and South Africa (the Ohio 7) were apprehended in 1983, tried on charges ranging from bombing Union Carbide offices to harboring a fugitive, and given long prison terms. In 1989 federal prosecutors recharged the seven, under both RICO (Racketeer Influenced, Corrupt Organizations Act) and Seditious Conspiracy statutes, with the exact same acts as in the 1983 charges, a move that could have added 40 years to each person's sentence.

Similarly, six white activists against U.S. foreign policy (the "Resistance Conspiracy" defendants), who were already serving long prison terms, were indicted in 1988 in connection with a 1983 bombing of the U.S. Capitol building to protest the invasion of Grenada. Resistance Conspiracy supporter Judy Greenspan noted that evidence used to reindict three of the six was exactly the same as that used in their original trials.

Prosecutors often manipulate the site of the trial to ensure conviction. This tactic is most blatant in the case of Puerto Rican activists tried on the mainland. Attorney Jan Susler told Sojourners that in 1985, the FBI used armed troops to pull 16 Puerto Ricans from their homes, accusing them of illegally fighting for Puerto Rican independence. Five of those arrested were hauled north to Hartford, Connecticut, where they were tried in a foreign language, in a land and culture unfamiliar to them, by jurors with little understanding of their history and struggle.

ATTACKING THE DEFENSE TEAM

The FBI has planted informants among defendants' lawyers and paralegals; bugged the defense table, lawyers' cars, and hotel rooms; and placed bugs and videocameras in prison visiting rooms, making a mockery of confidentiality between lawyer and client. Hatcher was forbidden his lawyer of choice (William Kuntsler). Defendants already in jail are sometimes denied legal visits altogether.

Native American activist Kahn-Tineta Horn, along with 52 other Mohawk defendants, faces charges of rioting for standing with her community in defense of sacred Mohawk burial grounds in Oka, Quebec (Canadian and American officials have cooperated in putting down Mohawk resistance to development on the land.) Horn and other defendants have been blocked from getting public information for their defense. "I found out from someone in the government that there's a government-wide suppression of documents for me in particular," explained Horn. "I send in my $5, but they refuse to give me the documents."

More serious and far-reaching are the narrow constraints courts put on what political defendants can say in pleading their cases. Deutsch noted that judges regularly forbid defendants and their lawyers from speaking about the political realities behind their actions, such as the history of injustice against their people. Yet judges allow prosecutors to discuss the accused's political affiliations and beliefs.

"The government was able to say everything they wanted to about my political affiliation. They brought up incredible things about me that had nothing to do with the trial," noted Jaime Delgado, a leader in the Puerto Rican independence movement who was charged in 1986 with conspiring to free Oscar Lopez-Rivera from Leavenworth Penitentiary. (According to Susler, who worked on Delgado's case, the FBI attempted to manufacture such a "conspiracy" by planting operatives in Leavenworth and in Chicago's Puerto Rican community.) "But when we would ask a question [about the FBI conspiracy] the judge would say 'you can't say that in here.'"

A federal prosecutor was allowed to interrupt and cross-examine Mumia Abu-Jamal on his past association with the Black Panther Party in the middle of Abu-Jamal's closing statement to the jury, according to Equal Justice USA, a human rights group working on Abu-Jamal's case. Abu-Jamal is a black Philadelphia journalist whose work became controversial when he covered the 1978 Philadelphia police attack on the MOVE organization. Abu-Jamal questioned the fairness of the ensuing trial at which nine MOVE members were each given 30 to 100 years for shooting a policeman.

In 1981, a Philadelphia police officer was killed in a struggle that involved Abu-Jamal, who was also shot. It was unclear who fired on the policeman, and eyewitnesses described an assailant that could not have been Abu-Jamal. Yet prosecutors, making political, misleading statements, argued for and got the death penalty.

"Gag orders" narrowing what defendants can say have been particularly egregious in the case of Puerto Rican activists, who justify their actions (including armed struggle) by United Nations resolutions affirming colonized peoples' right to fight for independence. The United States invaded Puerto Rico in 1898 and since then has kept it as a non-voting "commonwealth"; 13 percent of arable Puerto Rican land is occupied by U.S. military bases. Each year the U.N.'s committee on colonization affirms that Puerto Ricans are being denied self-determination, but the United States routinely blocks the United Nations from voting on whether Puerto Rico is a colony. Many Puerto Rican prisoners (and some black prisoners), citing international laws on the treatment of combatants in decolonization struggles, consider themselves prisoners of war and do not recognize the U.S. judicial system's authority over them.

For many Puerto Rican "independentistas," the only defense possible is a political one. But in a 1983 trial of four independentistas, the judge issued a ruling proclaiming that Puerto Rico is not a colony and that the issue was irrelevant to the case, Susler said. The judge then prevented witnesses from testifying on the status of Puerto Rico. During a 1980 trial, guards literally stuffed cloth in Alicia Rodriguez's mouth to keep her from speaking about Puerto Rico.

Many activists working in solidarity with oppressed groups believe the Nuremberg decisions give them not just the right but the duty to break U.S. law in defense of human rights, and have cited such decisions in trial briefs. But according to Frances Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, judges routinely forbid any discussion of international law or treaties in U.S. courtrooms. The gag order on the Epiphany Plowshares group "became more and more limiting until they couldn't mention God, the Bible, or conscience," noted Liz McAlister, a nonviolent activist on the board of Freedom Now!.

Federal prosecutors also influence juries in more subtle ways. Deutsch noted that excessive security measures -- armed guards in the courtroom, special metal detectors, and in one case a bulletproof wall between defendants and spectators -- are used in political trials to give jurors the message that the accused are terrorists, even when the accused have not endorsed violent methods. "When I was brought from the federal building to the jail they would block off the streets in the middle of downtown and post armed guards up and down the streets," recalls Delgado, who had no criminal record and was charged with conspiracy, not criminal acts.

Prosecutors have recently begun using "anonymous juries," in which jurors are given numbers and told never to reveal their names or addresses because the defendants might come after them. According to Deutsch, courts rarely challenge such moves, but generally cooperate with federal strategy in political trials.

"It is almost impossible for a political protester to get a fair trial in the United States today," concluded Frances Boyle at the New York City tribunal. "A murderer, a robber, or a rapist will get a fairer trial than a Catholic nun protesting nuclear weapons."

BUT THE POLITICAL NATURE OF "JUSTICE" for these defendants is most evident in their sentences and in what happens to them behind bars. Political defendants are routinely given maximum sentences, higher than those of murderers or rapists, according to lawyer Mary K. O'Melveny. "The figures are astronomical compared to sentencing in other countries," O'Melveny said.

It is revealing to compare the sentences of progressive activists with those given right-wing defendants. In 1986, Linda Evans was sentenced to 45 years for buying four guns under a false name and hiding a fugitive. In the same jurisdiction, Ku Klux Klan leader Don Black, arrested while heading to invade the island of Dominica with a boatload of explosives, was sentenced to three years and paroled in two.

Raymond Levasseur of the Ohio 7 was sentenced to 45 years for bombing four unoccupied military targets. A man convicted of bombing 10 abortion clinics was sentenced to 10 years and served four. Peltier was given two life terms; Jose Dioniso Suarez got 12 years for assassinating Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier.

Once imprisoned, political activists are almost routinely placed in maximum security facilities. "They are accorded maximum security treatment and status beyond their behavior because of who they are," noted Julia Cade of the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) National Prison Project. "They may be a model prisoner and yet they are manacled and kept under a shotgun when traveling."

Such prisoners are also often denied customary privileges. Plowshares prisoner Jean Gump told Sojourners she was refused a furlough to attend her brother's funeral unless she went in shackles and accompanied by a U.S. marshal.

Almost every person in prison for politically-related charges has spent time (sometimes years at a stretch) in solitary confinement. Often no reason is given other than reference to the inmate's beliefs and the possibility that they might organize prisoners.

The warden [at Alderson Prison] told me in writing that I was being kept in solitary because of information from the federal government and the FBI about my political associations and beliefs," Resistance Conspiracy defendant Laura Whitehorn told Sojourners. "I was taken to recreation by myself and other prisoners were threatened if they talked out the windows to me. The first day at rec I was wandering around and I heard a voice yelling out a window, 'Hey sister, are you a political prisoner?' I said, 'Yeah, how'd you know?' and she yelled, 'Cause otherwise you wouldn't be out there by yourself.'"

Jaime Delgado's case is typical. Delgado told Sojourners that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) classified him as a "level 1" prisoner (the lowest security rating) eligible for placement in a minimum security camp. Yet he was placed at Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary in Indiana, a level 4/5 prison second only to Marion Prison in security.

"The Bureau of Prison's own policy is they don't like to put a low-level security prisoner in a high-level security facility because that person will be a target of all the lifers and long-term prisoners," noted Delgado. Delgado served three years at Terre Haute; shortly before his release he was put in solitary with no explanation.

When Delgado appealed his placement, he was told that local officials had no jurisdiction over him because he was a "special case" prisoner whose case was being handled by the national office of BOP. According to Susler, Puerto Rican political prisoners are often controlled from the highest levels of the BOP. Similarly, McAlister notes that Plowshares prisoners have been listed among inmates who cannot be moved without special clearance from Washington, DC.

Male political prisoners are often sent to Marion Prison in Illinois, the most maximum security prison (and the only level 6) in the United States. Amnesty International has condemned Marion as violating the U.N.'s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

Since 1983 the entire prison has been on permanent "lockdown"; inmates are kept in 8-by-10 cells 23 hours a day and are denied vocational and educational programs, religious services, contact visits, and socializing. Inmates who "misbehave" may be tied spread-eagle and naked to concrete slabs and are sometimes beaten. The prisoners' water is drawn from a lake that the Environmental Protection Agency has put on its Superfund cleanup list because of high amounts of PCB, lead, and arsenic, and prisoners have a high incidence of related health problems.

According to the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown, Marion holds more political activists than any other prison. A congressional audit in 1984 found that 80 percent of the men at Marion could be placed in a lower security facility. A former Marion warden has said in court that "the purpose of the Marion Control Unit is to control revolutionary attitudes."

Political activists are often placed in special "high security units" (HSUs), such as that at Lexington Federal Prison in Kentucky. In 1986, Resistance Conspiracy defendant Susan Rosenberg, independentista Alejandrina Torres, and activist Silvia Baraldini were transferred to the Lexington HSU, although none of them had any history of prison discipline problems. In the HSU, according to an Amnesty International report, they were isolated from all other prisoners, kept under 24-hour camera surveillance (even in the shower), and strip-searched whenever they left their cells. Mail and visits were severely restricted and they were not permitted the usual educational, work, or recreation programs.

In 1987, both Amnesty International and the ACLU Prison Project investigated the Lexington HSU and found that the women were suffering psychological deterioriation from the isolation and sensory deprivation. The HSU was in the prison basement so that there was no natural light or ventilation; floors, ceiling, and walls were painted white and the women were not allowed to put anything on the walls or to have many personal possessions. Sensory deprivation has been used against political activists in Germany with devastating effects, and many observers believe HSUs are deliberate experiments in such techniques.

In 1989, Federal Judge Barrington Parker ruled that prisoners had been placed in the HSU because of their political beliefs and ordered the BOP to redefine the criteria or close the unit, stating that "consigning anyone to a high security unit for past political associations ... is a dangerous mission for this country's prison system to continue."

But the BOP is continuing this mission. They have recently developed a new HSU for 98 women at the prison in Marianna, Florida, and are building a new maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, which prison officials have said will be more restrictive than Marion.

EVEN IN THE GENERAL PRISON population, political prisoners receive harsh treatment. At the tribunal and in written testimony, prisoners have described a litany of abuse. These measures are used against "social" prisoners as well, particularly when they speak up for their rights, but there is a disturbing consistency in their application to political prisoners.

Black Liberation Army leader Assata Shakur testified that she was beaten by police while recovering from gunshot wounds in the hospital. Kazi Toure, Sekou Odinga, and other black activists have described lengthy beatings in their cells; Odinga was tortured with a lighted cigar and had his toenails ripped off. In 1979, Puerto Rican activist Angel Cristobal Rodriguez was found dead in his cell with a four-inch wound on his forehead. Although prison officials claimed he hanged himself, nearby inmates have testified that they heard him being beaten in the night, activist Alejandro Molina told Sojourners.

Women political prisoners are targets of sexual abuse. Alejandrina Torres has testified that in 1984 she was brutally pushed to the floor by a male guard and forcibly cavity searched while the guard pressed his leg into her neck. Torres has also been placed in administrative segregation on an all-male unit, where she was subjected to sexual threats.

To punish and isolate them, prisoners are frequently and arbitrarily transferred, often thousands of miles from their families. Kazi Toure was transferred 40 times in six years. In 1982, Elizam Escobar was transferred to a prison 300 miles away in the middle of his family's yearly visit from Puerto Rico, Susler told Sojourners. Kakwirakeron, a leader of the Mohawk Warrior Society, was moved to a new facility every four hours for a week in 1990. According to the Mohawk Warriors Legal Defense Fund, U.S. marshals would not reveal his location to his family or lawyers. Although a judge recommended that Kakwirakeron be placed in a minimum security camp in the Northeast, he was sent to a level 4 prison in Virginia, 400 miles from his family.

Political prisoners also have had legal visits and mail arbitrarily denied. Independentista Haydee Beltran was placed on "no visitor" status her entire first year in prison.

Prisoners with political backgrounds are frequently barred from educational and work programs.

Ricardo Jiminez has been denied access to such programs at all six prisons he has been in, and Escobar, a painter, was prevented from painting for a year, Susler said.

Native American prisoners are routinely prevented from observing their religion in prison and are punished for requesting religious freedom, according to Bobby Castillo. He said the Marion lockdown actually began in 1980 when he, Peltier, and four other Native American prisoners initiated a work strike in protest of being denied their religious ceremonies.

Susler said prison authorities frequently refuse medical treatment to prisoners in extreme pain or with potentially life-threatening conditions, such as painful breast lumps and Agent Orange poisoning. When medical care is given, it is often brutal and inadequate. "Denying medical care is a very effective way to break people," Susler noted grimly.

The most blatant example of medical abuse is that of Alan Berkman, a medical doctor who has worked with political movements since the 1960s. In 1985, Berkman developed Hodgkin's disease (cancer of the lymph nodes) while awaiting trial for weapons possession and conspiracy. According to a support committee for Berkman, federal officials tried to send him to a prison hospital not equipped to treat Hodgkin's. Berkman was then sent to Marion, where tests to check for a recurrence of Hodgkin's were not regularly performed.

In 1988 Berkman requested a CAT scan to check for a recurrence of Hodgkin's, but it was not performed until March 1990, and even though the test indicated cancer, authorities put off a biopsy until May. Hodgkin's disease is fatal if left untreated. Berkman was finally operated on in shackles and rushed back to prison less than half an hour after the anesthetic wore off. Public pressure was required to get him chemotherapy.

Berkman is now partially paralyzed. He has been eligible for parole since 1987 and has an excellent prison record, but he has been denied parole even on humanitarian grounds.

It is before parole boards that these inmates are most blatantly punished for their politics. Prisoners with political backgrounds are generally denied parole, even if they have good records and recommendations from prison personnel. At Geronimo Pratt's 1988 parole hearing, Los Angeles District Attorney Dianne Vianni said Pratt must remain jailed because "he is still a revolutionary man," according to prison rights activist Ward Churchill.

"There was no budging on their parole unless they took a stand of renouncing their politics. This was very overt," stated McAlister of political inmates she knew.

"I went to the parole board three different times," recalled Marilyn Buck, a Resistance Conspiracy defendant. "All they asked me was if I still thought what I thought, if I knew people in the Black Liberation Army, if I would associate with these people. They would deny parole if I didn't give the right answers. They never wanted to know anything about my prison record or rehabilitation."

IN A RECENT DOCUMENT, Deutsch and Susler warn that the judicial environment for political activists is becoming more repressive under the justification of "fighting terrorism." The latest targets seem to be the environmental movement and black anti-drug groups. The FBI recently spent $2 million to infiltrate the environmental group Earth First! and have arrested group leaders on conspiracy charges. The Black Men's Movement Against Crack, which helped expose police involvement in the crack trade in New York City, is under police surveillance, according to movement supporter Lateefah Carter. Three group leaders were recently jailed on suspicious weapons charges.

Deutsch and Susler note that recent FBI guidelines greatly expand the power of the FBI to gather intelligence. In the 1983 trial of four Puerto Rican activists, the government was allowed to use evidence obtained by breaking into houses and planting hidden cameras and microphones. "The interpretation of the Fourth Amendment was substantially altered by that case," asserts Susler. When Carol and Tom Manning of the Ohio 7 were arrested, the FBI held their three young children for two months, and interrogated their 12-year-old son five times, according to Carol Manning.

The FBI is increasingly using the Grand Jury to investigate political movements, most recently the Pledge of Resistance. Individuals subpoenaed must testify in secret proceedings, stripped of their right to remain silent, and activists have been imprisoned for as long as three years for refusing to testify.

Another new tactic is "preventive detention." Under the "Bail Reform Act" passed in 1984, federal officials can hold people in prison before trial indefinitely -- if they are judged "a threat to the community" or at risk of flight. Resistance Conspiracy defendant Laura Whitehorn was imprisoned for four and a half years before trial. Filiberto Ojeda Rios was jailed for almost five years before his trial for shooting at an FBI agent, at which he was acquitted. Irish citizen and IRA member Joseph Doherty has been held in U.S. prisons for seven years although convicted of no crime in the United States.

A federal judge in Baltimore stated that Whitehorn must be held without bail because she had said she lived "by revolutionary and human principles." According to Whitehorn, preventive detention has been used in every felony case since 1984 involving a left-wing defendant.

Federal prosecutors are increasingly using broad "conspiracy" charges based on activists' beliefs and associations. The Civil War charge of Seditious Conspiracy has recently been used against Puerto Rican independence activists, the Ohio 7, and others. Two people can be convicted of Seditious Conspiracy and sentenced to 20 years if they "conspire to overthrow by force the Government of the United States ... or oppose by force the authority thereof ... or prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any laws of the United States." "It's a thought crime. Conspiracy means you agree with that concept," notes Cade. "It's a very powerful steamroller."

AFTER TWO DAYS OF TESTIMONY, the tribunal judges (legal experts and human rights observers from eight countries) delivered a 26-page verdict outlining judicial abuse against political movements, and concluding that "within the prisons and jails of the United States exist substantial numbers of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War." The judges called on the U.S. government to "release all prisoners incarcerated for the legitimate exercise of their rights ... in opposition to U.S. policies." Groups like Freedom Now! plan to use the verdict to press the case of political prisoners within the U.S. Congress and international organizations and among U.S. citizens.

Religious bodies have also begun raising their voices. Last July, 40 religious leaders from different faiths met for an Interfaith Religious Summit on Political Prisoners sponsored by NCC and other groups. Out of the summit came "A Call to Liberation," a document pledging its signers to work for justice for political prisoners.

As head of NCC's Prisoner of Conscience Project, Michael Yasutake has begun organizing local committees to monitor prisons and the treatment of political prisoners in their area. The POC Project has led delegations to press specific concerns (such as toxic water at Marion) with BOP officials and key congresspersons.

Freedom Now! operates an Urgent Response Network, sending letters and telegrams in response to human rights violations against political prisoners. Such public pressure has a real effect in ending abuse and restoring basic privileges (a public campaign recently helped get Alan Berkman transferred to a BOP medical facility in Rochester, Minnesota). Freedom Now! also makes resources available for educational presentations on political imprisonment and encourages people to visit and write to prisoners.

Yasutake recognizes that some religious pacifists feel a tension in supporting prisoners who accept armed struggle as part of the path to social justice, but he believes it is important to talk openly about issues of violence and resist the government's campaign to bury activists. "Political imprisonment is one of the most crucial issues in terms of what's happening in our society because it intimidates people and keeps them from doing what's right," he asserted.

Like many advocates for prisoners' rights, Liz McAlister believes it is important not to separate the issue of political prisoners from the overall political reality that this society locks up its poor and oppressed members (the prison population is more than 50 percent black, and one in four black men will go to prison in his life). "It's destructive to isolate people," McAlister warns. "It's the them-and-us mentality that enables the government to pick us off one by one."

Naomi Thiers was a free-lance writer in Washington, DC when this article appeared.