5/16/2023 0 Comments Hashi lightHe was held in isolation there for two-and-a-half years after he was arrested in 2003 at age 23. In an account to be published in a new book on solitary confinement - titled Hell Is a Very Small Place - a Pakistani prisoner, Uzair Paracha, gives one of the most detailed illustrations yet of incarceration at the MCC. Why does this country that has nothing to do with us have a say in his life?”įatuma cannot fully share with journalists what she knows about her brother’s treatment in the MCC, a gray slab of a building that goes largely unnoticed by the office workers and tourists walking the streets near the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn bridge. Government restrictions - known as “special administrative measures,” or SAMs - prevent prisoners, their attorneys, and family members from describing the conditions inside the high-security unit to the wider public, shrouding New York’s little Guantánamo in secrecy. “It had nothing to do with the United States. government’s approach is hard to understand. “I believe you believe this organization you joined was dramatically different than what you thought or hoped it would be,” Judge Gleeson said.įor Fatuma Hashi, the U.S. Government prosecutors were seeking 15 years, but Judge John Gleeson of the Eastern District of New York said the case was “complicated,” and accepted, in part, Hashi’s position that he joined al Shabaab not to engage in violent attacks but because he thought the group could restore peace to war-torn Somalia. He will likely be incarcerated at a Supermax facility in Colorado or a high-security “communications management unit” in Illinois or Indiana, all of which mean ongoing solitary confinement. Last week, on January 29, he was sentenced to nine years in prison. In May 2015, after two-and-a-half years of isolation, Hashi entered a guilty plea of conspiring to provide material support to al Shabaab. They accept that Hashi poses no specific threat to any Americans and that he received “harsh treatment” in Djibouti. Prosecutors say he traveled to Somalia to attend a training camp and fight with al Shabaab in Somalia’s civil war. government to face charges of supporting al Shabaab, the Somali terrorist organization. In November 2012, he was transported to New York by the U.S. According to defense attorneys, Hashi was threatened with physical abuse and rape if he did not cooperate. Upon entering Djibouti, Hashi was arrested by agents of the secret police and forced to watch other prisoners gagged, blindfolded, and beaten for hours, he alleges in case filings, with the complicity of FBI agents and other unidentified Americans. prosecutors allege he was traveling to Yemen to join al Qaeda. He crossed into neighboring Djibouti to visit the British consulate there, he claims, and appeal the decision. In 2012, while Hashi was visiting Somalia, the British government used special powers to strip him of his citizenship, leaving him stateless. He was pressured to become an informant, according to accounts he gave to rights groups and local authorities, but refused, despite being warned that doing so would make his life difficult. A former MCC prisoner and a psychologist specializing in trauma told The Intercept that the kind of extreme isolation imposed on defendants there can pressure them to accept a guilty plea, irrespective of actual guilt.įor Hashi, who worked at a community youth organization in London, everything changed when he was approached by MI5, the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency. But the MCC’s 10-South wing, which houses terrorism suspects, is no different in these respects. Prolonged isolation prior to or in the absence of trial, sensory deprivation, and a lack of independent monitoring are normally associated with the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and CIA black sites overseas. Yet most of Hashi’s time in solitary confinement occurred before he had been deemed guilty by the justice system. Apart from occasional visits by his lawyer, his human interaction has been limited to brief, transactional exchanges with guards and a monthly 30-minute phone call with his family. He has had no physical contact with anyone. For over three years, he has been confined to a small cell 23 hours a day without natural light, with an hour alone in a slightly larger indoor cage. Mahdi Hashi, a young man of Somali origin who grew up in London, had never been to the United States before he was imprisoned in the 10-South wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan in November 2012, when he was 23. Or whatever’s happening in the outside world. “You’re not allowed to speak about political issues. ![]() ![]() ![]() BEFORE EVERY PHONE CALL that Fatuma Hashi has with her brother Mahdi, FBI agents come on the line to tell her what she is not permitted to talk about.
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