A collective of United Nations specialists is urging federal, state, and local US authorities to undertake "immediate and comprehensive" measures to address a persistent scandal involving individuals who remain incarcerated after being subjected to torture by Chicago police to coerce false confessions, The Guardian reports. The group of UN special rapporteurs, who specialize in addressing the scourges of contemporary racism and torture, has released a report detailing a long history of brutal and racist police misconduct, citing “information we have received regarding historical and continuing allegations of the systemic corruption and use of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by law enforcement officials in the Chicago area”. Such treatment has led to wrongful convictions and unjust incarceration of individuals, especially those of African and Latino/Hispanic descent, the report contends.
The allegations of injustice in Chicago stretch from the 1970s and 1980s to the present day, with people still in prison whom the UN report says signed confessions after allegedly being tortured for hours or even days by being beaten and bones broken, kicked, given electric shocks, suffocated and burnt, among other violence, and deprived of sleep, food and water, all while racist insults were shouted at them. The UN group, in sending out its report this month, said some Chicagoans affected who have been released after serving long sentences, are nevertheless “unable to rebuild their lives” because they have no support to establish their innocence officially and no access to redress. As a result, many individuals remain imprisoned, despite being detained on the basis of torture and ill-treatment by the police following flawed and unlawful criminal proceedings. “These individuals have all this evidence of torture, and for many of the cases, it’s already been determined that they’re innocent,” said Dr. Nadine Naber, Mamas Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity founder and a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
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