Prisons and Prisoners

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    Activist Kianoosh Sanjari’s Final Act Stuns Iran

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    Repeatedly imprisoned in his country, Kianoosh Sanjari refused to be silenced by the government. But in the end, despairing of change, he silenced himself.The Iranian government first arrested him when he was a teenager protesting a crackdown on student activists. He remained undeterred.For two decades, the regime repeatedly threw him into jail and detained him in psychiatric institutions, but the more Iran tried to silence him, the more outspoken Kianoosh Sanjari became. A tall, lanky man known for his dark suits and striped ties, he recounted the horrors he had experienced in interviews and videos posted on his social media accounts.“The Islamic Republic ruined the days of my youth, as it did to millions of others,” Mr. Sanjari, a well-known journalist and human rights activist, once said. “Days that could have been filled with passion, happiness and sweetness were spent in prison, doing irreversible damage to my body and soul.”Last Wednesday, Mr. Sanjari plummeted from a commercial building in central Tehran, hours after declaring that he would take his own life as a final act of protest if the government did not release four political prisoners by the evening. He was 42.News of his death has shaken Iranians, with many saying it was the long years of government-inflicted trauma that ultimately led to his end. Many were especially rattled by the manner in which Mr. Sanjari’s death unfolded in public view, and in real time, as he posted a series of increasingly alarming messages on social media over the two days before it happened.Amid the outcry, Iranians have been wrestling with subjects seldom discussed openly in the country: the effects of long-term trauma on political prisoners; the invisible mental health suffering of activists who may not reach out for help; and whether their country has adequate measures in place for people who threaten suicide.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Two Allies Wrestled Over a Crypto Giant and a Prisoner

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      The United States and Nigeria often collaborate. But the arrest of an American worker strained their diplomatic relations.After eight months in custody in Nigeria, an American working for the cryptocurrency firm Binance is coming home, ailing but alive, in a case that had strained U.S. ties with one of Africa’s most influential countries.Tigran Gambaryan, a compliance officer for Binance, had been held on money-laundering charges as part of a sweeping Nigerian government case against the company.On Thursday, a plane equipped with medical equipment departed Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, to bring him back to the United States. During his detention, Mr. Gambaryan had contracted malaria and double pneumonia, and he has a herniated disk.His release came after months of diplomatic pressure by the United States and in return for American promises of an improved partnership with Nigeria, including on cybercrime investigations.The detention of the American came as Nigerian frustration over Binance and other companies was rising, and as officials there sought more help in cracking down on cryptocurrencies for their country’s economic crisis.Mr. Gambaryan had arrived in Nigeria just days before he was arrested in February. He was initially held in a government-owned guesthouse but was transferred to the notorious Kuje prison in April.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      José Rubén Zamora Will Leave Prison After Nearly Two Years

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      The case against José Rubén Zamora became a sign of crumbling democracy in Guatemala and a symbol of threats against press freedom across Latin America.After spending more than 810 days in a cramped cell with little more than his books to keep him company, one of Guatemala’s most renowned journalists will be released to house detention this weekend as he waits to find out whether he will be granted a new trial.The decision comes after a judge ruled Friday that José Rubén Zamora, the founder and publisher of elPeriódico, a leading newspaper in Guatemala that aggressively investigated government corruption, had spent too much time in prison without a trial and that he was not likely to flee. “I have never wanted to flee Guatemala, which is also my country, not just the country of the authorities in power,” Mr. Zamora, 68, told the judge. “If you place your trust in me, I will honor it.”Mr. Zamora was convicted last year of money laundering, sentenced to as many as six years in prison and fined about $40,000. He called the charges politically motivated and said they were retaliation for his newspaper’s focus on public corruption.As part of his detention outside jail, he will be required to report periodically to the authorities and remain confined in his home.His trial was plagued with irregularities and was broadly seen as fundamentally unfair — another move to undermine democracy and target critical press coverage during the administration of former President Alejandro Giammattei.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Under Trump, U.S. Prisons Offered Gender-Affirming Care

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      The Trump administration’s approach is notable in light of a campaign ad that slams Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants.A campaign ad released by former President Donald J. Trump in battleground states slams Vice President Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants, concluding: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”But the Trump administration’s record on providing services for transgender people in the sprawling federal prison system, which houses thousands of undocumented immigrants awaiting trial or deportation, is more nuanced than the 30-second spot suggests.Trump appointees at the Bureau of Prisons, a division of the Justice Department, provided an array of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, for a small group of inmates who requested it during Mr. Trump’s four years in office.In a February 2018 budget memo to Congress, bureau officials wrote that under federal law, they were obligated to pay for a prisoner’s “surgery” if it was deemed medically necessary. Still, legal wrangling delayed the first such operation until 2022, long after Mr. Trump left office.“Transgender offenders may require individual counseling and emotional support,” officials wrote. “Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualized assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable).”The statement, in part, reflected guidelines that officials in the Obama administration released shortly before they left office in January 2017, which were geared at ensuring “transgender inmates can access programs and services that meet their needs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nebraska Supreme Court Upholds Voting Rights for Felons

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      The Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the secretary of state on Wednesday to allow people with felony convictions to vote after finishing their sentences, resolving confusion about who can participate in this year’s election and rejecting an argument by the state attorney general that lawmakers overstepped in extending voting rights to those with convictions.The ruling, issued with early balloting in the state already underway and voter registration deadlines approaching quickly, will help shape the state’s electorate, which can carry special importance in presidential races because of the way Nebraska splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district rather than using the winner-takes-all approach of most states. Nebraska also has a competitive U.S. Senate race this year, as well as a tightly contested U.S. House race in the Omaha area. The ruling on Wednesday was expected to affect thousands of potential voters.Nebraska, which usually votes Republican in statewide races, was part of a national trend in loosening voting rules for people with criminal records. In 2005, lawmakers in the state abolished a lifetime voting ban for people convicted of felonies, but continued to require people to wait two years to vote after finishing their sentences. This year, in a bipartisan vote, lawmakers got rid of that waiting period, clearing the way for people to cast ballots immediately after finishing prison and parole terms.Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, allowed the bill to become law without his signature, but the measure attracted skepticism from Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen, both Republicans.Just before the new measure was set to take effect this summer, Mr. Hilgers released a written opinion saying that both the new law and the 2005 law were improper. He argued that under the Nebraska Constitution, only the state’s Board of Pardons could restore voting rights to someone with a felony conviction. Mr. Evnen then instructed county election officials to stop registering voters with felony convictions. The Board of Pardons is made up of Mr. Pillen, Mr. Hilgers and Mr. Evnen.Reached on Wednesday morning, Cindi Allen, a deputy secretary of state, said Mr. Evnen’s office planned to comment on the ruling on Wednesday afternoon. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hilgers said they were reviewing the ruling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Seeking Release on Bail, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Downplays Risk of Witness Tampering

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      In an appeal, lawyers for Mr. Combs wrote that a judge’s decision to withhold bail was not based on evidence that he had sought to interfere with the sex trafficking investigation.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul fighting racketeering and sex trafficking charges, filed an appeal on Tuesday of a judge’s decision to deny him bail, arguing that concerns he would intimidate witnesses if released from jail were unfounded.Mr. Combs has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for three weeks, since the federal case against him was revealed to the public. Judge Andrew L. Carter of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered that Mr. Combs be detained ahead of his trial, ruling that he posed a danger of witness tampering and a safety risk to others.In their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, wrote that the government’s argument that their client posed a risk of obstructing justice was based on speculation, not evidence that he had sought to interfere with the criminal investigation into his conduct.The lawyers, Alexandra A.E. Shapiro and Jason A. Driscoll, argued in the court filing that Mr. Combs’s decision to travel to New York to face the charges, coupled with an intricate proposal for monitoring outside the government’s custody, helped support his release from jail ahead of his trial.“Mr. Combs is presumed innocent,” they wrote in the filing. “He traveled to New York to surrender because he knew he was going to be indicted. He took extraordinary steps to demonstrate that he intended to face and contest the charges, not flee. He presented a bail package that would plainly stop him from posing a danger to anyone or contacting any witnesses.”Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs of running a “criminal enterprise” that helped him carry out a decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence, alleging that he coerced women into “highly orchestrated” sexual encounters with prostitutes through the use of drugs, physical and emotional abuse, and financial pressure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Congo Releases More Than 700 Inmates After a Deadly Stampede

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      At least 129 people died when inmates tried to escape from Makala Prison, where conditions are abysmal and overcrowding is a major problem.More than 700 inmates were released from the largest prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s authorities said on Saturday, as officials sought to ease overcrowding in a facility where at least 129 people died in an attempted jailbreak this month.Congo’s justice minister, Constant Mutamba, announced their release during a visit to the Makala Central Prison, where the deadly episode highlighted the alarming conditions faced by inmates in the only prison in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and one of Africa’s most populous cities.Mr. Mutamba promised that Kinshasa would get a new prison, though he did not give details.Of the 729 inmates released, most — 648 — were released on bail.On the evening of Sept. 2, inmates, whose cells had been without water and electricity for more than a day and a half, tried to break out to escape the stifling heat, several inmates told The New York Times.The details remain unclear, but most of the deaths occurred in a stampede that followed, while at least 24 people were fatally shot while trying to escape, the country’s authorities have said. Several female prisoners were raped, according to Human Rights Watch and Congo’s interior minister.The Makala Prison, which was built in 1957 during the era of Belgian colonial rule and little renovated since, has a capacity of 1,500, but has at times held 10 times more than that.Military reinforcements at the entrance of Makala Prison after an attempted jailbreak this month.Hardy Bope/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe prison’s director, Joseph Yusufu Maliki, has been suspended, and dozens of inmates accused of raping female inmates during the jailbreak soon faced trial.Some of the women told the television channel TV5 Monde that 10 men, some of whom were armed with scissors and knives, had raped them and threatened to kill or mutilate them if they resisted.Human rights organizations and journalists have long described conditions in Makala and other prisons in the Central African country as inhumane: overcrowded, violent and filthy.Last year, more than 500 inmates died from suffocation and various diseases at the prison, according to Emmanuel Adu Cole, a human-rights activist based in Kinshasa. Mr. Cole said that out of about 15,000 inmates, only 2,500 had been convicted; the rest were awaiting trial.“Most of the inmates have no reason to be held in such inhumane conditions,” Mr. Cole said in a telephone interview. “This cannot continue.”More than 500 inmates had been released from the Makala Prison in August, before the attempted jailbreak shed a new light on the conditions there.“There is a program, across the country, that aims at building new prisons,” Patrick Muyaya, a government spokesman, said this month on the television channel France 24. “The incident that happened is going to accelerate the process that had already started.”Mr. Muyaya did not provide details on how many facilities would be built, nor when they would be operational. More

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      Correction Officers Who Failed to Aid Dying Inmate Won’t Be Charged

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      Correction Department rules “do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the New York attorney general’s office said.Michael Nieves sliced his throat with a razor around 11:40 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2022. For the next 10 minutes, correction workers at the Rikers Island jail complex stood by his cell and watched him bleed without providing medical care.Mr. Nieves later died.The failure by three correction workers to offer aid was “an omission” that contributed to Mr. Nieves’s death, the New York attorney general’s office of special investigation found in a report published on Tuesday. But because Mr. Nieves might have died even had he received immediate medical help, the attorney general, Letitia James, said her office would not charge the workers criminally.In a surprising finding, the report also said that the workers had followed correction department rules by deciding not to render help.“The D.O.C.’s rules and regulations do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the attorney general’s office said in a news release.The decision not to charge the corrections workers “is incredibly disappointing,” said Samuel Shapiro, a lawyer hired by members of Mr. Nieves’s family, who have filed a lawsuit against the city in federal court. Describing surveillance footage that captures Mr. Nieves’s suicide attempt and the workers’ response, Mr. Shapiro said, “It is incredibly disturbing to watch city employees stand there as Mr. Nieves is slowly bleeding to death from his neck and do nothing to help him.”The Department of Correction suspended all three workers for 30 days. When they returned to work, they were prohibited from having contact with detainees. In May 2023, two officers, Beethoven Joseph and Jeron Smith, were accused by the department of violating rules and a directive on suicide prevention and intervention. The disciplinary proceedings are still pending, the attorney general’s office said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gao Zhen, Artist Who Critiqued the Cultural Revolution, Is Detained in China

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      Mr. Gao is being held on suspicion of slandering China’s heroes and martyrs, an offense punishable by up to three years in prison, his brother said.Gao Zhen, a Chinese artist who has drawn international acclaim for works critiquing the Cultural Revolution, has been detained in China, his brother and artistic partner Gao Qiang said on Monday.The Gao brothers are best known for their statues depicting Mao Zedong in provocative or irreverent ways, such as “Mao’s Guilt,” a bronze statue depicting the leader on his knees, supplicant and remorseful.The police in Sanhe City detained Gao Zhen, who moved to the United States two years ago, last week while he was visiting China, his younger brother said in an email, on suspicion of slandering China’s heroes and martyrs — a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison.The police also confiscated several of the brothers’ artworks, all of which were created more than 10 years ago and “reassessed Mao’s Cultural Revolution,” Gao Qiang said. The works included “Mao’s Guilt”; “The Execution of Christ,” a statue depicting Jesus facing down a firing squad of Maos; and “Miss Mao,” a collection of statues of Mao with large breasts and a protruding, Pinocchio-like nose.About 30 police officers stormed the brothers’ art studio on Aug. 26 in Yanjiao, a town in Sanhe City about an hour away from Beijing, Gao Qiang said. The officers asked Gao Zhen, 68, to hand over his mobile phone, and when he refused, they handcuffed and arrested him, Gao Qiang said. Gao Zhen was in China with his wife and son, visiting relatives, his brother said.The next day, Gao Zhen’s wife was notified by the Sanhe City public security bureau that he was being detained on suspicion of slandering heroes and martyrs, Gao Qiang, 62, said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More