ANSWER Coalition Los Angeles has a meeting each Tuesday at which organizing projects are discussed and educational presentations are made. At last Tuesdays's meeting, four separate presentations were given on U.S. political prisoners and the status of the movements attempting to free them.

One of those presentations, "Illegal Detentions of the U.S. War on Terror," was captured on video and is presented here. Watching this requires RealPlayer; if you don't already have this, it is free at www.real.com (be sure to select the free player and not the trial version of the non-free one). It is recommended that you download the presentation file and then watch it locally.

Below is an outline of the presentation:

There is no popular movement at the present time around this issue.

These cases are different from the Peltier case, but those imprisoned are political prisoners nonetheless.

There are 660 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay

1:20 Platt amendment granted U.S. Guantanamo Bay

After invasion of Afghanistan 600+ people were rounded up and shipped to Gitmo's "Camp X-Ray"

Labeled enemy combatants instead of POWs. This circumvented international law with respect to POWs.

No charges for anyone there.

Torture is prevalent.

Five British nationals released, which is why we know about the torture.

One was a Web designer and he had been to both Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta

Conditions:

Water black

Food 10 years out of date

Beaten by guards

Abused sexually

No useful intelligence from any of these interrogations.

June Supreme court decisions.

Ruled that inmates can file petitions of Habeus Corpus

Still no right to a lawyer

Still tried by a military tribunal

Specific cases: U.S. citizens

Yasser Hamdi

Supposedly captured in Afghanistan

Supreme Court ruled three years later that he could have a lawyer.

Conversations will be monitored

Could still be heldd indefinitely.

Bush Administration decided that since a movement was burgeoning behind Hamdi as a U.S. citizen, they brokered a "deal" in which Hamdi was stripped of his citizenship and shipped to Saudi Arabia.

7:30 Jose Padilla

Arrested in Chicago

Ashcroft claimed he was part of a plot to unleash a dirty bomb.

Only evidence was unpublished testimony from alleged terrorist in Pakistan who said that he and Padilla were planning to detonate a dirty bomb.

Held in NC in prison with no communication.

Second U.S. Circuit Court of appeals said he must be released within 30 days.

Administration took it to the Supreme Court.

Refused to hear the case because write of Habeus Corpus was filed in wrong court.

But the governement would not tell lawyer where Hamdi was...

12:00 These cases are part of the prison-industrial complex

U.S. has highest prison population in world: 2.1 million in prison, 5 million more in the system on parole, etc.

Mostly of color

African Americans are 45 percent of inmates but only 12 percent of population

1 in 25 native adults are in the prison system (4 percent). 38 percent above the national average.

Prison population is used as cheap labor, and it is used to manage unruly populations.

Mostly non-violent, drug use-related crimes.

9 billion was spent in 1982 on prisons; now that figure is more than 57 billion.

We must continue to fight against this institutionalized racism.

There is a movement taking on the prison industrial complex

More revolts inside and outside prison, and popular discontent, are certain to come.