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swag

(26,480 posts)
Wed Feb 18, 2015, 03:38 PM Feb 2015

Guantánamo torturer led brutal Chicago regime of shackling and confession

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/guantanamo-torture-chicago-police-brutality?CMP=share_btn_tw

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.

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