Detainees

WASHINGTON -- A Guantanamo Bay detainee who grew up in Catonsville forcefully denied government charges that he is an al-Qaida operative and said he had been tortured by CIA and Pentagon officers, according to transcripts of a military hearing released yesterday. Majid Khan, 27, one of 15 men the U.S. government designated as "high-value" enemy combatants, is alleged to have helped top al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed research terrorist plots against the United States. Khan and 13 others were moved from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo in September.

HOLDING immigration law violators is a growth industry for county jails. Nationwide, about 8,000 detainees are held in local detention centers under contracts with the Immigration and Naturalization Service; about the same number are held in federal facilities.The INS prisoners have a short average stay, five weeks, and typically require no increase in staff to oversee them. Walk-offs are rare. They are not violent offenders. Their detention, paid for by INS, can produce welcome small windfalls for local jails.

Private companies that run home-detention programs will be regulated by the state starting tomorrow.The rules approved by a legislative committee yesterday include a provision that requires companies to use equipment that will instantly send an alarm when someone sentenced to home detention strays.That provision, added by the Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review, means some companies will have to upgrade their technology or leave the business.The rules proposed by corrections officials would have allowed companies to monitor detainees by making random phone calls, as some do now. Lawmakers said the proposal did not go far enough.

"None of us is alone. We're members of history," a character says in "Incident at Vichy.""We are symbols," another answers.That exchange typifies this rarely produced 1964 play by Arthur Miller. One of the playwright's most blatantly political works, it is receiving a competent production at Fell's Point Corner Theatre. But the cast's efforts cannot disguise the didacticism of the text.The plot focuses on nine men and a boy who are rounded up by the collaborationist government in Vichy, France, in 1942.

YORK, Pa. -- At first, they were strangers -- Chinese refugees locked away in the York County Prison and residents going about their business in this blue-collar town. Three-and-a-half years later, they have become allies in a battle nearly won.Any day now, 39 asylum-seekers will gain their freedom, and waiting on the other side of the prison door will be the townspeople whose faith and moxie helped make it happen.Last week, President Clinton ordered the detainees released, saying these men, smuggled here on a ship called the Golden Venture that ran aground in New York, had been in prison long enough.

Twenty-nine Mexicans found working illegally in two Eastern shore poultry processing plants were sent back to Mexico yesterday, tearing apart families and friends.After spending two years in Seaford, Del., Juana Cabra, 20, had to leave behind her infant daughter -- an American citizen -- and her common-law husband, Cesar, when she was placed on a U.S. Justice Department plane and flown to the Texas border."I have a nine-month-old daughter and they took her [Cabra] away," Cesar said while standing outside the Wicomico Detention Center in Salisbury.

Struggling to support his wife and two daughters, Genaro Cux-Garcia left his home in northern Guatemala Jan. 7 to seek work in the United States, knowing little about the countrysurrounding his hometown, much less the state of Maryland.Crossing frigid mountains, neck-deep rivers and scorching deserts, the farmer says he ate little but oranges and depended on strangers for water and shelter.He lost half his money during a robbery by four masked bandits in south Mexico -- they didn't get the pesos he'd kept in his shoes -- and crossed the border easily into Arizona.

YORK, Pa. -- They sit hunched over desks in a steamy room inside a county jail, 11 Chinese men experiencing the rhythm and beauty of a new language.Line by tortuous line, they recite from a poem called "Success."It's loyalty when duty calls,It's courage when disaster falls.The teacher, a patient woman with a soft voice, asks, "What does disaster mean?"The men look hard at the paper in front of them. But there is only silence, until an American minister named Bob Brenneman roars: "Disaster.

OMARSKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The vast mining complex here, with its open pits and ore processing system, looks like anything but a concentration camp.The nondescript buildings in their barren frontier landscape have been cleaned up, and there is no trace of the blood reputedly spilled here.But during the last month, dozens of eyewitnesses have provided compelling evidence of murder and torture on a wide scale at this complex, where the Serbs who conquered much of Bosnia brought several thousand Muslims and Croats.

Pro-Iranian Shiite kidnappers in the Middle East have freed three Western hostages since Thursday. Muslim sources say further hostage releases hinge on Israel's taking the next step by freeing more than 300 Arab prisoners. Israel, in turn, has reiterated that before it frees any detainees, it wants seven Israeli servicemen missing in Lebanon.The Evening Sun wants to know what you think about the current hostage situation. To register your opinion, call SUNDIAL at 783-1800 (or 268-7736 in Anne Arundel County)

It's been a busy summer at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The joint task force in charge of the 226 remaining detainees is spending about $440,000 to expand the recreation yards at Camp 6. At nearby Camp 4, which offers communal living for the most "compliant" captives, the soccer yard is being enlarged. At Camp 5, a maximum-security facility, a $73,000 classroom is under construction. In March, the task force added art classes to the thrice-weekly instruction it offers in Arabic, Pashtu and English, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

WASHINGTON - -Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials. The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Barack Obama inherited from the Bush administration.

When Jimmie Shannon began working at a residential center for detainees in Baltimore 22 years ago, he wasn't sure where the job would take him. He was, however, certain that he was there for the long haul. "And I'll tell you why," said Shannon, who retired as director of the Volunteers of America Chesapeake Supervised Residential Center. "Because I was looking for a job that I could have an influence on helping people." Shannon, 64, stepped down in July from his position overseeing a staff of 30 at the 95-bed facility, which houses male detainees awaiting trial or serving brief sentences for minor, nonviolent charges.

Should U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a prosecutor to investigate alleged abusive treatment of detainees by the CIA? Yes 26% No 71% Not sure 3% (1,156 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Did Baltimore police act appropriately in the Inner Harbor incident that led to the arrest of Ravens rookie linebacker Tony Fein? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

With the economy still sputtering, unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health care reform under attack, it's little wonder President Barack Obama isn't eager for a distracting debate over the Bush administration's policy on torture to extract information from suspected terrorists. But a report released Monday revealing new details of the abuses carried out by the agency shows why Mr. Obama will have to tackle the subject. Indeed, within hours of the report's release, the Justice Department announced a criminal probe of alleged detainee abuses, and the White House said it will assume direct control of interrogations of terror suspects.

The 40,000 men and women held in Baltimore jails each year could receive speedier access to medical care and see improved sanitation conditions under a settlement between state officials and prisoner rights advocates filed Tuesday in federal court. Over the years, the advocates have documented what they say are dire problems at the Baltimore City Detention Center and the Central Booking and Intake Center: A longtime diabetic died after not receiving insulin. An asthmatic died because jail employees thought he was faking his condition and didn't give him an inhaler.

America is at a turning point. How we will come to terms with the government abuses unleashed in the aftermath of 9/11 is a historic test of our highest principles. Are we a nation of laws? Will we stand by our commitment to the rule of law over the tyranny of state-sanctioned brutality? Maryland's particularly powerful congressional delegation in Washington can be pivotal as the nation chooses how to proceed. And, of course, members of Congress will more likely rise to the occasion if they hear from the public they represent.

WASHINGTON - - The Obama administration will announce plans Friday to revive the Bush-era military commission system for prosecuting accused terrorists, current and former officials said, reversing a presidential campaign pledge to rely instead on federal courts and the traditional military justice system. Word of the imminent decision infuriated human rights groups, who argued that any trials under the system created by former President George W. Bush would be widely viewed as tainted and said the Obama administration was duplicating the mistakes of former administration.

Rosemary Munyiri is not the sort of woman who has run-ins with the law. She's never even had a parking ticket. But on a rainy April evening last year, the cardiac nurse was ordered from her car at gunpoint by a city police officer, handcuffed, arrested on traffic violations and taken to downtown Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center. There, she says, she was illegally strip-searched in front of other detainees without cause. "It made me feel so violated, just knowing that I hadn't done anything wrong," the soft-spoken, 29-year-old Baltimore County woman said, her face scrolling through a catalog of emotions as she recounted the tale: outrage, fear, shock.

A federal appeals court panel this week threw a monkey wrench into efforts to free 17 Chinese dissidents detained as terrorist suspects after the U.S. toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001. President Barack Obama, who has pledged to close the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo, should use this case to repudiate the Bush policy of indefinite detention without charge and order their release. The suspects are ethnic Uighurs (pronounced "WEE-gurz") from western China who had fled to Afghanistan fearing persecution for their separatist views.