VP Dick Cheney, fmr. AG Alberto Gonzales Indicted by Texas Grand Jury for Prisoner Abuse
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Related subjects: Denver Lessing, Executive Powers, Immigration Policy, Quid-pro-quo: Corruption, Rendition & Ghost Flights, U.S. Politics Comments Off
US vice president Dick Cheney has been indicted by a Texas grand jury for crimes related to an alleged prison-profiteering scheme, including but not limited to charges of “at least misdemeanor assaults”, due to his investments in certain firms. Former US attorney general Alberto Gonzales was also indicted, along with 5 other individuals. The indictment is connected to the dealings of an investment company, involving privatized federal prisons in Texas.
Prosecutors allege that Cheney, who holds an $85 million stake in a firm with investments in the prisons in question, conspired with Mr. Gonzales and others to cover up investigations into ongoing prisoner abuse. The “assaults” against prisoners held at these privately managed facilities include assaults on prisoners by other prisoners, which were allegedly countenanced and which prosecutors allege were condoned implicitly by the attempt to suppress investigation into the prisons.
There is also mention of “direct conflict of interest” relating to VP Cheney’s potential policy authority over contracts that could be awarded to the private prison firms. The grand jury also found that then-AG Gonzales “used his position … to stop the investigations as to the wrong doings”. The conspiracy element of the indictment may open the prosecution to look into activities related to or that demonstrate the conspiracy, and some are calling for an investigation into other aspects of prison policy in which the two officials played a role.
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While at least one defense attorney called the prosecutor’s case a “circus act” and an attempt at political revenge against the current administration, the BBC reports that “The grand jury wrote that it made its decision ‘with great sadness,’ but said they had no other choice but to indict Mr Cheney and Mr Gonzales ‘because we love our country.’”
Reporting on the Cheney-Gonzales indictment and the broader Texas prisons case, Brenda Norrell writes that:
Human rights activists urged a probe into prison profiteering after the private prison corporations GEO Group and CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) began receiving enormous federal contracts to build detention centers to imprison migrants.
The root of the indictment is an organized criminal activity probe, alleging deliberate prison-profiteering. It is further alleged that this profiteering activity led to deficient management at the prisons in question, and that an alleged effort to cover-up crimes committed at those prisons, and thus the profiteering scheme, led to a permissive environment for violent assaults and at least one death.
Norrell further writes that human rights observers allege a “fever-pitched racism mounted toward immigrants at the US/Mexico border was induced for the purpose of prison profiteering by US officials reaping enormous profits.” GEO was also awarded the contract to manage the Migrant Operations Center at the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the controversial extrajudicial terror-suspect detention camp is located, raising the concern that terror detention policy could be directly linked to individuals’ private investments.
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