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      War Crimes Hearing Gives Public Virtual Look Inside a Secret C.I.A. Prison

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      Years after the agency’s “black site” program was shut down, details are slowly emerging during trials at Guantánamo Bay.The public on Monday got its first view of a C.I.A. “black site,” including a windowless, closet-size cell where a former Qaeda commander was held during what he described as the most humiliating experience of his time in U.S. custody.The former commander, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, led the 360-degree virtual tour of the site, Quiet Room 4, during a sentencing hearing at Guantánamo Bay that began last week. He described being blindfolded, stripped, forcibly shaved and photographed naked on two occasions after his capture in 2006.He never saw the sun, nor heard the voices of his guards, who were dressed entirely in black, including their masks.Mr. Hadi, 63, was one of the last prisoners to be held in the overseas black site network where the George W. Bush administration held and interrogated about 100 terrorism suspects after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Even now, years after the Obama administration shut the program down, its secrets remain. But the details are slowly emerging at the national security trials of former prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.In court on Monday, spectators saw Quiet Room 4, a 6-foot-square empty chamber, which Mr. Hadi said resembled the place he was held for three months — minus a bloodstain that was on the wall of his cell then.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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      Russian Forces Quash Prison Mutiny Led by Terrorism Suspects, State Media Reports

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      The assailants had taken two guards hostage and were killed, the prison service said.Russian special forces have quashed a short-lived mutiny at a provincial detention center on Sunday, killing detainees, some charged with terrorism, who had broken out of their cells earlier in the day, according to Russian state media.Six detainees who awaited court appearances at a pretrial detention center in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don had managed to take control of the facility, state media reported. Armed with knives, the suspects took two guards hostage, the reports said.A video posted on Rostov’s local news channels and reposted by some Russian officials appeared to show a man identified as one of the detainees brandishing a knife and demanding a car to leave the detention center for an unspecified destination. A detainee is seen in the video holding a black flag associated with the Islamic State. The video could not immediately be verified.Security agents had surrounded the detention center by Sunday morning. Soon after, Russian state media published a short statement from the country’s prison service saying that security agents had stormed the facility, “liquidated” the mutinied detainees and freed the hostages unharmed.The Rostov governor and senior federal officials have yet to comment on the episode.The Rostov mutiny comes less than three months after assailants staged the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in more than a decade at a concert hall near Moscow. The attack, which killed nearly 150 people, took place despite U.S. intelligence services providing a detailed warning to their Russian counterparts of the impending plot.The Islamic State took responsibility for the concert hall attack. President Vladimir V. Putin, however, has blamed it on Ukraine and Western intelligence services, without providing evidence.Mr. Putin’s critics said those accusations were an attempt to deflect his government’s failure to deal with the threat of Islamist terrorism as their attention shifted to the war in Ukraine.Sunday’s attack could renew the public discussion of that threat, which is fueled by the Kremlin’s suppression of separatist Muslims inside Russia and Mr. Putin’s support for the Islamic State’s enemies in Syria.At least one Russian official publicly questioned how the Rostov detainees managed to break out of their cells and overpower the guards.“They clearly were planning this for a while,” Andrei Medvedev, a Russian propagandist and regional lawmaker in Moscow, wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday. “Where is the protocol for dealing with especially dangerous detainees?”Hwaida Saad More

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      Steve Bannon Is Rallying MAGA World Before Prison Sentence

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      The onetime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump has framed his impending imprisonment as an act of patriotism.Stephen K. Bannon was sitting in the back seat of an S.U.V. on a pleasant Friday evening in Powhatan, Va., enjoying what could be his last weeks of freedom.A day earlier, Mr. Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, had been ordered by a federal judge to surrender by July 1 to begin serving a four-month prison term for disobeying a congressional subpoena.But there was never a question about whether he would show up as scheduled to headline a rally in rural Virginia for Representative Bob Good, the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. This kind of thing — this kind of crowd — is what he lives for.“This is ‘War Room,’” Mr. Bannon said proudly as he watched rally goers carrying lawn chairs and blankets spreading out to hear him speak. He was referring to the influential podcast he streams from his Capitol Hill basement for four hours every weekday.He was going to need to find some guest hosts to keep it all going in his absence. But Mr. Bannon, who has long reveled in his infamy, insisted that his impending imprisonment would only make him stronger. He framed it as the ultimate act of patriotism by a MAGA warrior whom the government was bent on silencing in the months leading up to the presidential election.“There’s no downside,” Mr. Bannon said. “I served on a Navy destroyer in my 20s in the North Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. I’m serving in prison in my 70s. Not a bad book end.”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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      Former Waupun Prison Warden and 8 Employees Charged in Inmate Deaths

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      Inmates had complained about a monthslong lockdown that cut them off from family members and timely medical care.The former warden of a Wisconsin prison and eight other prison employees were charged on Wednesday in connection with multiple inmate deaths over the last year, the local sheriff said.The prison, Waupun Correctional Institution, about 70 miles northwest of Milwaukee, was the subject of a 2023 report by The New York Times and Wisconsin Watch that found that inmates had been confined to their cells for months and denied access to medical care.The prison’s former warden, Randall Hepp, had left his job earlier this week. He was charged with misconduct in public office, a felony. Mr. Hepp’s arrest was first reported by The Associated Press. His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.The other prison employees, most of whom worked as correctional officers and registered nurses, were charged with abuse of an inmate. Two of the correctional officers and a sergeant were also charged with misconduct.In announcing the arrests during a Wednesday news conference, Dale J. Schmidt, the sheriff for Dodge County, Wis., said Mr. Hepp and the other employees had failed to adequately care for inmates in their custody. Sheriff Schmidt described in detail four deaths, including one involving a prisoner who had not eaten in days and was “drinking sewage water” and “played in the toilet.” The medical examiner said the cause of death was malnutrition and probable dehydration, and ruled it a homicide.Randall Hepp, former warden of Waupun Correctional Institution.Dodge County (Wis.) Sheriff’s OfficeDo you, or does anyone you know, work for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections?

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      U Tin Oo, Embattled Pro-Democracy Leader in Myanmar, Dies at 97

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      Once one of his country’s most powerful figures, he helped found its main opposition party. “I had to face up to the harm I did to people when I served in the army,” he said.U Tin Oo, a former Burmese armed forces chief and minister of defense who turned against his country’s repressive government to become a leader of the pro-democracy movement there, died on Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar. He was 97.His personal assistant, U Myint Oo, confirmed his death, in a hospital. He said that Mr. Tin Oo had a weak heart and died of kidney failure and pulmonary edema.Once one of the most powerful figures in what is now Myanmar, Mr. Tin Oo founded the National League for Democracy, the country’s main opposition party, with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi during a violent failed pro-democracy uprising in 1988.Three years later, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize while under house arrest. She is again in detention, and it was not clear whether she had been informed of Mr. Tin Oo’s death.Mr. Tin Oo stood with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi outside her home in Yangon in 1996.Stuart Isett/Associated Press“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would be deeply saddened to hear of his passing, as she has lost a trusted confidant,” Mr. Myint Oo 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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      Robert Pickton, Notorious Canadian Serial Killer, Dies at 74

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      Convicted in the murder of six women (though he boasted of killing many more), he died of unspecified injuries after being assaulted in prison.Robert Pickton, one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers, whose crimes called attention to police and societal disregard for the violent deaths of Indigenous women, died on Friday after a fellow inmate attacked him in prison in Quebec, where he was serving a life sentence. He was 74.His death, in a hospital, was announced by Correctional Service Canada, which said he had been assaulted on May 19 at Port-Cartier Institution and had died of unspecified injuries. The announcement did not give a motive for the attack.In 2007, Mr. Pickton was convicted in the murders of six women, though he boasted to an undercover police officer that he had killed 49 in all.The remains of his victims were found at a ramshackle pig farm he owned outside Vancouver, where authorities conducted what at the time was the largest crime-scene investigation in Canadian history. After 18 months, they found the remains of 33 women.The victims were mainly members of Indigenous groups, and most were sex workers and drug addicts whom Mr. Pickton encountered in the Downtown Eastside, an underbelly of the scenic, affluent Vancouver.Mr. Pickton was able to continue killing for so long, according to an investigation by the provincial government of British Columbia, because of police bias toward the race and marginalized status of his victims.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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      Two Inmates Remain at Large in Louisiana Jail Escape

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      Two of the escapees were back in jail after being found in a dumpster, while the others remained at large, officials said.Four men were able to escape from Tangipahoa Parish Jail in Louisiana this weekend because of an eight-inch gap and a lack of oversight at the facility, the authorities said. Two of the men were still at large as of Monday night, while the other two had been found hiding in a dumpster, the police said.Jimmy Travis, the chief of operations for the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s office, blamed structural issues and a lack of oversight by the jail staff in a news conference on Monday.The four men escaped after they evaded correction officers during recreation time in the yard and hid out until darkness, according to a Facebook statement from the Tangipahoa Parish sheriff, Daniel Edwards.The men escaped in pairs, Mr. Travis said. The first two — Avery Guidry, 19, and Travon Johnson, 21 — left the jail on Saturday by evading correctional officers and escaping through a narrow, eight-inch gap under a wall before scaling two fences after dark. On Sunday, two other inmates — Omarion Hookfin, 19, and Jamarcus Cyprian, 20 — copied that route for their escape.The authorities were not aware that the men had escaped until a family member of one of the escapees called them on Sunday, saying that the men had tried to seek refuge at a relative’s house, Mr. Travis said. He attributed the delayed realization to understaffing and a lack of oversight.“If proper head counts had been conducted we would have known about it immediately,” he said.The staffing issues at the jail over the weekend are not unique for the state, which has one of the most overcrowded prison systems in the country. In 2022, Louisiana corrections officials told lawmakers that state prisons and juvenile detention facilities were understaffed because of low wages and poor conditions.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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      Riverside County Jail Death Lawsuit Is Settled for $7.5 Million Amid Inquiry

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      A violent encounter captured on video was part of a surge in jail deaths that spurred an inquiry into the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.Video from inside a Southern California jail shows a violent confrontation in October 2020 in which 10 sheriff’s deputies burst into the cell of a man who was having delusions and resisting medical care, restrained him and repeatedly shocked him, leading to his death days later.Officials in Riverside County did not bring charges against any of the deputies involved in the encounter with the man, Christopher Zumwalt, 39, but quietly agreed in December 2023 to pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by his family.Depositions from the case and video footage obtained by The New York Times show the frantic and violent minutes when deputies tried to force Mr. Zumwalt out of his cell as he paced and talked incoherently. In the video, deputies wearing helmets and shields toss canisters of pepper spray into the small concrete room, struggle with Mr. Zumwalt, and strap him to an emergency restraint chair. They cover his head with a spit mask and move him to another cell, where he sat unmonitored and appeared to stop breathing for at least five minutes. He died on Oct. 25, 2020, after experiencing cardiac arrest.Mr. Zumwalt, who was arrested near his home on Oct. 22, 2020, on suspicion of public intoxication, was never charged with a crime, and the arrest report indicates that he was to be released with a citation after he sobered up from the methamphetamine he admitted to taking the night before. On the day of his arrest, he was issued a citation for bringing drugs into a jail.In a statement Friday, Sheriff Chad Bianco said his deputies did nothing wrong and characterized the settlement as a business decision by lawyers that does not imply wrongdoing.“The facts of this case clearly show the actions of our deputies were appropriate and lawful,” Sheriff Bianco said, adding that actions taken by Mr. Zumwalt in a “methamphetamine-induced psychosis caused his death.” More