Before every
phone call that Fatuma Hashi has with her brother Mahdi, FBI agents
come on the line to tell her what she is not permitted to talk about.
“You’re not allowed to speak about political issues. Or
whatever’s happening in the outside world. Or his case,” she told
The Intercept.
Mahdi Hashi,
a young man of Somali origin who grew up in London, had never been to
the United States before he was imprisoned in the 10-South wing of
the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan in November
2012, when he was 23. For over three years, he has been confined to a
small cell 23 hours a day without natural light, with an hour alone
in a slightly larger indoor cage. He has had no physical contact with
anyone. Apart from occasional visits by his lawyer, his human
interaction has been limited to brief, transactional exchanges with
guards and a monthly 30-minute phone call with his family.
Yet most of
Hashi’s time in solitary confinement occurred before he had been
deemed guilty by the justice system. Prolonged isolation prior to or
in the absence of trial, sensory deprivation, and a lack of
independent monitoring are normally associated with the detention
center at Guantánamo Bay and CIA black sites overseas. But the MCC’s
10-South wing, which houses terrorism suspects, is no different in
these respects. A former MCC prisoner and a psychologist specializing
in trauma told The Intercept that the kind of extreme isolation
imposed on defendants there can pressure them to accept a guilty
plea, irrespective of actual guilt.
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