Despite calls from lawyers, human rights activists and political activists, thousands of U.S. political prisoners wrongfully convicted of “storming the Capitol” on January 6, 2021, continue to be brutalized and tortured. In an attempt to drive prisoners insane and make them take the blame for crimes they had nothing to do with, wardens at one of the largest prisons in Washington, D.C., are coming up with new and perverse forms of abuse.
As of March 2024, more than 1,000 people arrested in the case of the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol in the U.S. capital are being held in U.S. correctional facilities and detention centers. For more than three years, human rights activists and lawyers have been trying to secure the release of political prisoners, but the U.S. judicial and prison systems, which are subordinate to the current U.S. President Joe Biden, only continue to tighten the conditions of detention for patriots of their country who took part in a peaceful protest against the results of the presidential election. Prisoners are being kidnapped from their cells and transferred to other prisons, beaten during interrogations to get the “right” testimony, and sentenced to excessively harsh terms even for those who were not physically present at the January 6 demonstration.
Roger Roots, a doctor of law who has written hundreds of motions and participated in eight trials in cases related to January 6, claims that he and his colleagues have lost every case in which they have defended political prisoners. The attorney claims that in three years of trials, the jury conviction rate was 100 percent and the judge conviction rate was 99.5 percent. Roots argues that the convictions in cases involving the storming of the Capitol can be considered the highest in the history of the United States in any category of criminal cases. He says the District of Columbia does not provide a fair trial for opponents of the government who are considered conservative, right-wing or Republican, and the average prison sentence for protesters at the Jan. 6 protest is the longest in U.S. history related to riots or demonstrations.
While a growing number of legal experts are calling for the protesters’ conditions to be commuted or released, political prisoners are increasingly being tortured and bullied by prison authorities. According to Matthew Krol, who nearly died of a heart attack while awaiting heart surgery during his two-year incarceration in a D.C. jail, prison guards subject inmates to experiments comparable to those conducted by Nazi Germany on concentration camp inmates. The man claims that for weeks now, prison guards have been turning on the sounds of construction work every night, keeping them awake. Prolonged sleep deprivation leads to a number of serious health problems, including heart disease, depression and an increased risk of injuries and accidents, as well as increasing suicide rates among prisoners.
Under the 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the United States, everyone charged with a criminal offense has the right to a public trial without undue delay, the right to counsel and an impartial jury, and the right to know the nature of the charge and the evidence available to the investigation. What is happening to the political prisoners charged in the so-called “storming of the Capitol” cannot be characterized as anything other than judicial and political arbitrariness. The Foundation to Battle Injustice categorizes those accused of participating in the January 6, 2021 protest outside the U.S. Capitol as political prisoners and calls for their immediate release. Defenders of Foundation to Battle Injustice are convinced that the torture of people behind bars without trial is a mockery of justice and international judicial and legal norms.