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NATO 3 Being Tortured with "Sensory Deprivation," Posted Police Harassment Video, Now Charged

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National Lawyers Guild releases photo of alleged police infiltrator

The National Lawyer's Guild attorney for the three men charged with a major terrorist plot at the NATO summit in Chicago says they are being subjected to severe sensory deprivation.  On the same day, the prosecution requested, and was granted, a delay of a preliminary hearing until June 12, in order, the Chicago Tribune reports, "to give prosecutors more time to assemble the case against them."

The Chicago Tribune writes:

Michael Deutsch, an attorney for the National Lawyers Guild, said at a brief court hearing for the three that they have been held since bond hearings Saturday in "hospital-white" cells for 24 hours a day and have not been allowed to communicate with anyone.

"They are totally in isolation from everyone else in the jail and each other," Deutsch said. "They have nothing to read. They have no writing material. It's a kind of sensory deprivation situation."

Even short periods of complete sensory deprivation, and being held in absence of any daylight cycles, sound, human contact, or mental stimulation such as reading, are known to cause extreme stress and can lead to permanent psychological damage.  The issue of isolation and sensory deprivation being used as a form of torture which leaves no physical marks was explored thoroughly in the case of Bradley Manning.  Stuart Grassian MD, wrote in "Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement":

 "in adult rhesus monkeys even brief periods of social isolation produce compromised cognitive processing."

In testimony introduced at the trial of Fahad Hashmi in 2010, doctors said that:

"after 60 days' solitary detention people's mental state begins to break down and gradually develops into psychosis as the mind disintegrates."

The UN has called sensory deprivation and isolation a form of torture.

The activists, Brian Church, 22, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Jared Chase, 27, of Keene, New Hampshire, and Brent Betterly, 24, from Massachusetts, had posted a video on Youtube of their harassment by Chicago Police on May 10, 2012, in which police can be heard saying "we'll come looking for you, each and every one of you."  The officers also referred to the Democratic National Convention of 1968 in Chicago by taunting "billyclub to the f*cking skull."  Six days after the video was posted online, the three were arrested and then charged with a plot to attack various police stations, Rahm Emmanuel's house in Ravenwood, some banks, and Obama campaign headquarters with Molotov cocktails made out of beer bottles and bandanas.

Video posted on May 10, 2012:
(Unedited version 27 minutes)

Police had confiscated home beer brewing equipment from the apartment where the three were staying, and after charges were handed down accusing the defendants of filling beer bottles with gasoline, the men's attorneys at the National Lawyer's Guild (NGL) released a photo of the home brewing equipment in fact filled with beer (see "3 NATO Activists Charged with Terror Plot After Posting Video of Police Harassment".)

The NGL has charged that the case has been fabricated.  Supporters say the charges are retaliation for posting the harassment video.  

In a new development, the National Lawyers Guild has released a photo of one of the two men believed to have been posing as a protester but was actually a police infiltrator, who the NLG says took part in planting weapons alleged in the indictment to be stockpiled in the apartment.  The indictment has been posted on the Internet..  

Yahoo News AP:

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Ralph Lopez majored in Economics and Political Science at Yale University. He writes for Truth Out, Alternet, Consortium News, Op-Ed News, and other Internet media. He reported from Afghanistan in 2009 and produced a short documentary film on (more...)
 

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