22791: Miale: US to "clean up" Haiti's prisons - (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Walter Miale <wmiale@acbm.qc.ca>


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http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=5727

Haiti and Abu Ghraib

The US is to "clean up" Haiti's prisons -- just like it did Iraq's


by Dominique Esser & and Kim Ives

Date: June 17, 2004

A U.S. prison consultant sent last year to
"reform" Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, now world
infamous for the torture U.S. soldiers there
inflicted on Iraqis, is doing the same job now in
Haiti.

Terry Stewart is the former director of Arizona's
prison system. Under his watch (1995-2002), the
U.S. Justice Department repeatedly scrutinized
and sued the state's Department of Corrections,
alleging abuse, particularly of women. A 1997 DOJ
suit charged that male prison guards raped,
sodomized and assaulted 14 women. Female inmates
were made to shower while male guards stood by.
The suit was settled out of court with no guilt
admitted, but Arizona agreed to make major
changes in prison policies.

Last week, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) called
attention to Stewart's "checkered past" and
"shocking record of tolerating prisoner abuse."
In a Jun. 2 letter to the DOJ's Inspector
General, Schumer asked how Stewart "with a
troubling history in the United States'
corrections system" was selected to oversee the
reconstitution of Iraq's prison system, along
with three other controversial appointees.
Stewart worked in Iraq in May and June 2003.

"Stewart was charged with knowingly turning a
blind eye to repeated incidents of sexual abuse
by guards against female prisoners ranging from
sexual assault and rape to watching female
prisoners undress and use the restroom," Schumer
said in his letter. "Under Stewart's watch,
prisoners at Arizona facilities were also made to
stand outside for up to four days in the summer
and for up to 17 hours in the winter without
sanitation, adequate drinking water, changes of
clothing, proper food or protection from the
elements."

Now Terry Stewart is a partner in the private
consulting firm Advanced Correctional Management.
The U.S. State Department hired him to oversee
reform of Haiti's prisons after U.S. troops
militarily occupied the country in March.

Stewart is supervising a prison system from which
most of the convicts were set free by Haiti's
"rebels" around the time of the Feb. 29th coup
against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today,
the jails are refilled with hundreds of political
detainees affiliated to Aristide's Family Lavalas
party. The most prominent of them is Annette "So
Ann" Auguste, whom U.S. Marines violently
arrested at her Port-au-Prince home May 10 on
vague conspiracy charges (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol.
22, No. 9, 5/12/2004).

A recent incident well illustrates how Haiti's
prisons are running under Stewart's guidance.
Last week, independent journalist Kevin Pina went
to visit So Ann at the Pétionville jail where she
is held. While she is kept in a cell where
friends and journalists can visit her only under
tough restrictions, Pina found one of her fellow
inmates wandering freely around the jail:
convicted murderer Jodel Chamblain.

The former FRAPH death-squad leader turned
himself in on April 22 to be retried by the more
sympathetic authorities of the new coup regime
(see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 7, 4/28/04).

When Pina returned to the jail's reception room,
he found Chamblain thumbing through the identity
cards of So Ann's visitors. Chamblain had set
aside the cards of Pina and two other
journalists. When Pina complained to the prison
guard on duty, the guard just smiled.

Sen. Schumer questioned how and why Stewart
"could have been chosen for such a sensitive and
important role" as overhauling Iraq's prisons
"despite credible allegations of serious
misconduct" when he was a U.S. corrections
official. One must also ask, in light of the Abu
Ghraib revelations, how the U.S. government could
continue to employ Mr. Stewart, at U.S. taxpayer
expense, to bring his "expertise" to bear on
Haiti's prisons.