March 18, 2005

Guard Beats detainee in T.I. Prison
By Terelle Jerricks, Editor

     On March 5, Mohammed Mirmehdi was reportedly beaten by a guard at the Terminal Island ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Detention facility, according to detainees who declined to be identified for fear of retribution. Mohammed is one of the four Iranian brothers being held at the prison on immigration and, until recently, alleged terrorism-related charges.
     The incident began when Abdel Jabbar Hamdan, a Palestinian fellow inmate, requested to go to the restroom after meeting with a visitor. According to Hamdan, the guard stalled him for 30 minutes before the pain drove him to cry and beg the officer to take him to the restroom. Hamdan says the officer told him, he “shouldn’t have visitors” if he couldn’t hold his bowels, and suggested he defecate in the waiting room and clean up the mess afterwards.
     Upon hearing the commotion, Mohammed’s brother, Mostafa Mirmehdi, asked for the guard’s name. The guard, known by his name tag as M. Lopez, became belligerent and refused to give his name. According to Hamdan, Mohammed stood by his brother when he saw the commotion.
     The officer, according to eye-witness accounts, then viciously assaulted Mohammed, first throwing him against a wall, then attempting to choke him. When Mohammed stood up, Lopez punched him in the face and stomach repeatedly, then dragged him into a storage room–where there is no video camera—and continued to punch, choke and beat him. According to reports from the other inmates, Lopez also sat on Mohammed’s chest, pressing down with his full weight to restrain Mohammed.
      ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice would not confirm or deny these allegation but said only that they were being investigated. The investigation took place after this newspaper received an urgent call two hours after the incident. Due to the lack of physical access to the inmates by this reporter, the publisher reported the incident to the FBI’s civil rights division as a potential crime.
     A number of other detainees witnessed the attack through the door and window of the storage room, but none would go on record to confirm these reports, for fear of retribution. Witnesses saw visible choke marks on Mohammed’s neck and bruises on his stomach, arms and face before he was taken away to a segregation unit away from the general population. Mostafa, who managed to see his brother in the infirmary, reported seeing two wounds and bruises on Mohammed’s forehead, arms, chest, stomach, and reddish fingerprints on his neck. On March 8, Mohammed Mirmehdi was transferred to the Santa Ana ICE facility.
     The Mirmehdi brothers Mohsen, Mojtaba, Mohammed, and Mostafa have been incarcerated at the Terminal Island’s immigration jail for over three years for allegedly providing material support for a terrorist organization, the Moujahedeen el Khaleq (MEK), an organization that enjoyed wide support from members of the US Congress until it was placed on the state department’s list of terrorist organizations in 1999. The brothers were also charged with lying about when and how they arrived to the US on their political asylum application, and have recently been ordered to be deported. However, they can’t return to Iran for it is quite likely they would be imprisoned and tortured.
     Hamdan was arrested, in July 2004, by the Department of Homeland Security after several of his superiors and Board members at the Dallas, Texas-based Holy Land Foundation (HLF) were indicted for allegedly providing support to the Palestinian militant group, Hamas. Although his criminally-indicted superiors were released from custody with no charges, the DHS has kept Hamdan incarcerated based solely on the allegation that he is a “threat to national security.”
     Kice has been officially mum on the beating incident, except to say that the case had been referred to the Office of the Inspector General. However, the day after the incident, she told the Associated Press that the altercation began when Mohammed pushed the guard while he was trying to tell the detainees about the status of Hamdan. She claimed that, “Both men fell against a door and onto the concrete floor, causing them to suffer minor bruises.”
     While torture of detainees abroad has grabbed headlines around the world, these events raise the question whether intimidation, humiliation, and brutal assaults comprise a parallel problem here at home.