While assigned to the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, long-time Chicago detective and US Navy reserve lieutenant Richard Zuley led one of the most brutal interrogations ever carried out at the prison. The shocking details, uncovered in an investigation by the Guardian, further damage the reputation of the United States still reeling from recent revelations of wartime torture by the CIA.
Zuley implemented a regime of brutality to elicit murder confessions from minority Americans in Chicago and later conducted the most shocking acts of torture on detainees at Guantánamo Bay. His cruel tactics included shackling suspects to police-precinct walls through eyebolts, threats of harm to family members, pressure on suspects to implicate themselves, and threats of being subject to the death penalty if suspects did not confess.
Lathierial Boyd was one such unfortunate victim wrongfully convicted of murder in 1990. In 2013, Cook County Judge Paul Biebel ordered the release of an innocent man after he spent 23 years in prison for a crime he never committed. Boyd accused Zuley in a federal civil-rights lawsuit of planting evidence and withholding crucial details. Boyd told the Guardian that Zuley had a racial animus as well. “No nigger is supposed to live like this,” he said Zuley told him after the detective searched his expensive loft.
Zuley’s police work in Chicago was similar to his interrogation work at Guantánamo. Three people interrogated and sent to prison by Zuley produced evidence of internationally condemned tactics in Guantánamo Bay interrogation rooms. A heroin addict and petty criminal accused of murder in 1994, Andre Griggs’ case was highlighted by the Guardian. Griggs was handcuffed to a station wall for 30 hours, an ordeal that led him to sign a false confession.
Zuley performed even more vicious tactics during the interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (in pic below), a veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, at Guantánamo in 2003 including multiple death threats, extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and a terrifying night-time boat ride. Inmates were left with no option but to confess to put an end to Zuley’s ruthless punishment.
Mark Fallon, former deputy commander of Guantánamo’s investigative task force, said Zuley’s interrogation of Slahi was illegal, immoral, ineffective and unconstitutional. “The way he approached interrogations at Guantánamo, if that’s any reflection of what he did in Chicago, it would not surprise me that he’s got a few issues going on right now,” Fallon added.
Source: theguardian.com
