Call Now to Help 200 IMF/WB Detainees from a16-international-planning - "Denis Moynihan" <dmoynihan at hotmail.com>
IMF, World Bank Demonstrators Subject to Widespread Police Abuse
New Accounts Detail Gross Mistreatment in Jail and in the Streets
New reports of peaceful protesters beaten by police and U.S. Marshals, denied food and water and stripped of their basic constitutional rights give the lie to early accounts of police restraint during massive protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
 Detainees have deen denied food, water, toilets, medical attention, and access to lawyers.
 One instance was reported of an interrogator posing as a member
of the Midnight Special Legal Collective, the volunteer lawyers representing the activists.
 One non-violent protester had 3 ribs broken while he was arrested.
 Another protester was beaten in the face and then loaded into a
patrol wagon, leaving a pool of blood in the street. A police official told the drivers not to offload him at the jail but to drive him around for several hours, and then to drop him off near a hospital.
 At midnight on Monday, many activists still reported being denied food and water. Some were arrested at 4 AM, 20 hours earlier. Rachel Weber, a recent Harvard graduate from Boston, watched as one woman in her cell, who has hypoglycemia, began to throw up from lack of food. Police denied repeated requests for food or medical assistance.
 One group of men was taken into a basement, put into a cage, and told by a U.S. Marshall, *There are no cameras here. We can do whatever we want.* Anyone who looked up while the Marshall was speaking
was punched in the face.
 Another activist saw a U.S. Marshalls slam people*s faces into a wall.
 Jennifer Kirby, a housing advocate from Washington D.C., was part of a group of activists who took over an abandoned home to protest unfair evictions and social service cuts in the District of Columbia. *The police came in and dragged us out of the house. As the police dragged the last person out of the house, one officer was kicking him and saying *stop attacking my foot* and then all the police slammed him against a wall, saying *stop attacking the wall.* They dragged him into a six-inch deep puddle and left him in it got five minutes while they kicked him,* said Kirby.
Officers also used a variety of abusive tactics to pit activists in Jail
against each other and to break *Jail Solidarity,* cooperation between activists designed to ensure fair treatment by police.
 Black Echo a spectator at the arraignment of several hundred activists, heard the presiding commissioner Ringelle imply that if activists did not cooperate he would place them with the general jail population, where they they would be raped. *He told us *For a day or a week or a month [Jail] is not a pleasant place. People get sodomized.
The inmates run the D.C. Prison. * In the prison, the weak are preyed upon,* said Black Echo.
 Another group of activists was also threatened with incarceration with the general population, and told *they love to kill white boys over there, you pussy-faggot protesters.*
 Detainees are taken into solitary confinement and lied to, told
that they are the last ones in jail, that they won*t be released before their court date in July, that they have no rights.
The Midnight Special Law Collective is asking all concerned to call as many of the following numbers to help them in their efforts to gain justice for the remaining 200 IMF/WB detainees. Giving no names, express concern that detainees are being abused, and demand their immediate release.
All area codes are 202. DC Mayors office: 727-2980 DC Chief of Staff: 727-2643 DC Public Advocate: 673-4421 Dept. of Correction: 673-7316 DC Chief Judge: 879-2770 DC Executive Officer Ulysses Hammond: 879-1700 Police Academy: 645-0055 (detainees held here) Central Holding: 727-2894 1st Dist. Substation: 727-4655 Superior Court Chief Judge Eugene Hamilton: 879-1600 Clerk of the Court: 879-1401 US Atty. For DC: 514-2000 (insist on an investigation and prosecution on abuses, civil rights violations, and homophobia) Cell Blocks B & C: 727-2392
========== Please Circulate Widely also posted at http://www.interlog.com/~cjazz/a16.htm fwd by Gary Morton * * Some of the detainees are Canadians, including my reporter for citizensontheweb.com =================