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US government ‘does nothing about human rights violations by police’

Thursday, 26 February 2015 6:19 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 26 February 2015 6:40 AM ]

Police departments across the US are perpetuating “gross human rights violations” against minorities.

Police departments across the United States are perpetuating “gross human rights violations” against African-Americans and Latinos and the White House does nothing about it, a journalist in Detroit says.

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, says a new report about a secretive facility used for interrogations by Chicago police follows “a decades-long series of human rights abuses and civil rights abuses against mainly African-Americans and Latinos in Chicago.”

“The revelation that the Chicago police department has operated a so-called black site is not surprising to those of us who have followed the affairs of the Chicago police for many years,” Azikiwe told Press TV during a phone interview on Wednesday.

“This is further proof that there are gross human rights violations in the United States that are being perpetuated by the police and the US Justice Department, the White House are virtually doing nothing about it,” he said.

“This requires action on the part of civil society groups to rally further and to demand an end to police repression,” the journalist added.

According to a new investigation by the Guardian, the Chicago police department operates a secret interrogation compound, what civil rights lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The site, known as Homan Square facility on Chicago’s west side, is used to isolate suspects from family members or proper legal counsel while they are interrogated, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.

Those familiar with the site list a range of abuses which have taken place, including police beatings and prolonged shackling. Because suspects taken to Homan Square are not officially booked, there is no record of their location.

AHT/AGB

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