02/26/15 02/26/15 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] >> from pacifica this is democracy now! >> this old warehouse on chicago's west side is not a typical police facility. it is called homan square. it is described as equivalent to a cia black site. >> you go in and no one knows what happened to you. it is him must like they throw a black bag over your head and make you disappear for a day or two.

they are interrogation facilities. >> we speak to spencer ackerman about his explosive report on how the nation's third-largest city runs a secret interrogation facility. we will also speak to a woman who was held inside. and we will look at the connection between the chicago police department and guantánamo. >> in 2003, richard zuley oversaw one of the most brutal interrogations on record at guantánamo bay. but he tested versions of his interrogation techniques in chicago for 30 years. >> then to the middle east. as the islamic state seizes 220 christians in syria while u.s. led coalition airstrikes have reportedly killed over three dozen people in iraq including at least 20 civilians, earlier today, isis posted a video

showing members destroying ancient artifacts inside a mozilla museum -- mo resume days aftersul the historic library was destroyed. we will go to the iraqi city and speak to electric cockburn. all of that and more coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. two u.s.-led coalition airstrikes have reportedly killed over three dozen people in iraq, including at least 20 civilians. hospital sources told reuters a strike near the syrian border killed nine civilians and 17 islamic state militants, while a separate bombing west of baghdad killed six militants and 11 civilians. the bbc and washington post have revealed the identity of the

british mandate and jihadi jon huntsman featured in several islamic state beheading videos. the l it's a -- the l it say you lived in west london and was known to british security services. isis militants have continued to capture christians from villages in northeastern syria during a three-day offensive. activist groups have put the total number of christian hostages the between 220 and 300. in other news from syria, human rights watch says the syrian government used of girl bombs on rebel held areas has increased over the past year. hundreds of bombings have been carried out in two key rebel held battlegrounds in syria's civil war. the news comes just as the would seeks to secure a truce in aleppo after the assad regime said it's willing to stop the attacks. in a statement, human rights watch said -- "for a year, the security council has done nothing to stop

bashar al-assad's murderous air bombing campaign on rebel-held areas, which has terrorized, killed, and displaced civilians. amid talk of a possible temporary cessation of strikes on aleppo, the question is whether russia and china will finally allow the u.n. security council to impose sanctions to stop barrel bombs." in afghanistan, a suicide car bomber attacked a vehicle belonging to the top nato envoy in the country. turkish officials say the attack on the security team of turkish envoy ismail aramaz killed a turkish soldier and wounded at least one other person. the blast took place in the capital kabul, near a number of embassies. in northern afghanistan, more than 200 people have been killed in a series of avalanches amidst heavy snowfall. the avalanches engulfed homes across multiple provinces, burying the people beneath. agence france press reports at least 168 people were killed in the province of panjshir, where local authorities say they have

not seen this much snow for decades. in northern bolivia, thousands of people have been displaced by historic floods after the acre river overflowed its banks. footage from the area shows residents paddling in boats through flooded streets. vice president alvaro garcia linera spoke during a visit to the region. >> as you have seen various houses, various towns have been affected. it is unprecedented. we see flooding each year, but this year it has reached levels have not seen before. in our visit through the streets, which have now become rivers, we've seen between 500 and 800 houses affected, at least. that means 800, 1000, 1500 families who have had water rising up to the second floor in

their houses. in some cases, the waters covering the roof. >> scientists have warned increased flooding and heavy snowfall both fueled by human-caused climate change, as is the kind of bitter cold and snowstorms currently battering the southern u.s. in georgia, the weather delayed the execution of kelly renee gissendaner, who was set to become the first woman prisoner put to death in the state in about 70 years. the delay marks the first time georgia has delayed an execution due to extreme weather. the federal communications commission votes today on his door cluster the open internet. earlier this month after receiving a record number of public comments, fcc chair tom wheeler proposed reclassifying the internet as a telecommunications service under title ii of the communications act. the new rules would prevent internet service providers i comcast from blocking access to websites. slowing down content or providing paid fast lanes for internet service. the fcc is expected to pass the

roles for setting up a showdown with republican lawmakers on telecom companies. three brooklyn new york residents have been arrested and charged with supporting the islamic state. authorities say one of the suspects was arrested at kennedy airport while attempting to fly to turkey and join the militants in syria. a second man, who had a ticket for next month, was arrested in brooklyn. a third was picked up in florida and accused of helping fund their plans. new york city mayor bill de blasio said the city would increase counterterrorism measures. >> we all take the threat of ice is very, very seriously. the vigilance levels we maintain every day are our best shield, but we're going to continue to deepen our anti-terrorism capacity. and i think so much of what we're trying to do is making sure that not only do we have the number of officers on anti-terror duty that we need

the training, the equivalent etc., but we're constantly deepening our relationship with communities all over the city so there is a flow of information. >> the brooklyn case involved the use of a confidential informant paid by the government who befriended two of the men and helped them with travel arrangements. the informant apparently helped the 19-year-old suspect with travel documents after his mother became worried and took her son's passport. the intercept news site notes -- "crucially, it appears that only after the introduction of the informant did any actual arrangements to commit a criminal act come into existence." the supreme court has heard arguments in a landmark religious discrimination case involving a muslim woman rejected from a job for wearing a headscarf. samantha elauf was denied a job at a tulsa, oklahoma abercrombie and fitch store, even though she was rated highly by her interviewer, because a manager objected to her hijab. the retailer's rules on employee

attire included a ban on caps. the supreme court justices appear poised to reverse a lower court ruling rejecting elauf's case because she hadn't explicitly disclosed her religion or asked for an exemption. christine nazer, a spokesperson for the equal employment opportunity commission, which brought the case, read a statement from elauf outside the court. >> no one had ever told me that i could not wear a headscarf and so clothing. then i learned i was not hired by ember kolbe because i wear headscarf, which is a symbol of modesty in my muslim faith. this was shocking to me. i am great for to the doc for looking into my complaint and take him religious determination case to the courts. i'm not only standing up for myself, but for all people who wish to it here to their fate while at work.

>> documents from edward snowden have revealed the canadian government is dashing millions of citizen females under a massive cyber security operation revealed jointly by the cbc and the intercept. canada monitored visits to government websites and collected e-mails to the government at a rate of 400,000 per day. sometimes keeping the data for years. mexico has condemned the police killing of an unarmed mexican immigrant in texas. two weeks after another such killing sparked protest in washington state to mexican authorities say police in grapevine, texas violated a decades-old treaty by waiting for days to inform them of the killing of ruben garcia. police say they shot garcia during a traffic stop after he defied orders to halt and walked toward a patrol car with his hands in the air. the shooting came just days after the police killing of a man in washington. authorities say police fired 17 shots at him, hitting him five or six times.

cell phone video shows him, who is also unarmed, turning to face police and raising his hands before he was shot. marijuana has become legal in the nation's capital. starting today, adults over 21 can possess up to two ounces of pot in washington, d.c. mayor muriel bowser vowed to press ahead with legalization , despite opposition from republicans in congress, who even threatened to jail her. congress has oversight of laws in d.c., and republicans tucked a measure into a spending bill to block new laws easing marijuana rules in d.c. but bowser says the restriction is invalid, because it passed a month after pot legalization was approved by 70% of d.c. voters. >> we know the residents of the district of columbia spoke loud and clear last november 4 when they adopted initiative 71 to legalize small amounts of marijuana in washington, d.c.

and we are, our government is prepared to implement and enforce initiative 71 and the district of columbia. >> utah republican congressmember jason chaffetz told "the washington post" the mayor's move was illegal, saying -- "you can go to prison for this." d.c. joins three states -- washington, colorado and alaska -- where pot is now legal. meanwhile, house lawmakers in georgia have overwhelmingly passed a bill to legalize cannabis oil for patients with seizure disorders and other conditions. this comes as new research in the journal scientific reports has found marijuana is about 114 times less deadly than alcohol. the study found alcohol is by far the riskiest drug, followed by heroin, cocaine, and tobacco. the leaders of the bank giant hsbc face questions and calls for the resignation from british lawmakers over the bank's role in tax dodging and money laundering. it is reported hsbc used its

private swiss arm to hide more than $100 billion in accounts used by weapons dealers tax dodgers, dictators, and celebrities. british parliament number questioned stuart gulliver. >> no one is going to be punished for this. it looks like you are at the limit of progressive tax avoidance. do you think you have the moral authority to carry on this process in hsbc? >> i don't think the laws, which are quite clear would affect aggressive tax avoidance. i believe the change admin to the firm clearly demonstrates sincerity of my desire to actually improve hsbc. >> civil rights groups have condemned the decision by federal appeals court panel to dismiss a class-action lawsuit over the city's 2011 mass arrest of occupy wall street protesters on the brooklyn bridge. in august, the same panel allowed the lawsuit challenging

the arrest of more than 700 peaceful protesters to move forward. but this week, the panel reversed itself, dismissing the case. in a statement, the partnership for civil justice fund, which filed the suit, said -- "the court has abruptly doubled back on itself to tell the people of new york that if they participate in a police-led and escorted march, peaceful and compliant with all directives from the police, they can be subject to a shocking corralling and mass arrest by the nypd without any notice that such permission has been revoked or opportunity to disperse." and dori maynard, a journalist and longtime advocate for media diversity and accurate news coverage of people of color, has died of complications from lung cancer at the age of 56. maynard was president of the robert c. maynard institute for journalism education, co-founded by and named for her father, who became the first african-american to own a major daily newspaper when he bought the oakland tribune in 1983. in a recent interview posted by the institute for black male

achievement, maynard answered the question, "why do you do what you do?" >> for years when people would ask me this question, i would tell them, because i don't want my youngest brother's to get shot. i think people thought i was being overly dramatic and then trayvon martin got shot. i think people begin to understand that it is the back drop of a steady barrage of inaccurate and distorted coverage of black men, making them look like predators, making them the face of the problem. until we change that, no matter what we do to prepare black men to be successful in this society, we are sending them out into a hostile environment. >> dori maynard died at home in west oakland, california on tuesday. she was 56. and those are some of the headlines, this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh.

>> welcome to all our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. we begin today with an explosive new report that chicago police continue to operate a secret compound for detentions and interrogations, often with abusive methods. according to the guardian, detainees as young as 15 years old have been taken to a nondescript warehouse known as homan square. some are calling it the domestic equivalent of a cia black site overseas. prisoners were denied access to their attorneys, beaten, and held for up to 24 hours without any official record of their detention. brian jacob church, who was arrested during chicago's 2012 anti-nato protests, said he was shackled to a bench for 17 hours without being read his miranda rights. >> when they first arrested us they took us to this building. we were never booked. we were never processed. i was in homan square for about

17 hours handcuffed to a bench come up before i was actually finally allowed to see an attorney. essentially, the bench is about this wide and at the back, it had a bar they came across like this. they would not and handcuffed us to sleep -- unhandcuff us to sleep. so when i slept, i slept with my hand cuffed to the bar and i kind of slept like this. all of our ankles were handcuffed together as well. i asked them to make a phone call. i asked to talk to my lawyers. again, they -- they pointed at the phone number and was like, oh, you're not getting any phone calls. they were like, just tell us what we want to know and you can go home. >> at least one victim was found unresponsive in an interrogation room and later pronounced dead.

the guardian says the detainees brought to the homan site "are most often poor, black and brown." >> now, two former senior officials in the justice department's civil rights division are calling on their colleagues to launch a probe into allegations of excessive use of force, denial of right to counsel, and coercive interrogations. for more, we are joined by spencer ackerman, national security editor at the guardian, where he has published a two-part series on police abuse in chicago. this latest story is headlined "the disappeared: chicago police detain americans at abuse-laden 'black site.'" in his first installment last week, ackerman reported on a guantánamo bay interrogator involved in torture who was also a longtime chicago police officer known for abusing people of color. we will go all of through this. spencer, welcome back to democracy now! tell us more about homan. >> homan square is a place for a

number of undercover chicago police task forces operate. in tugging force anti-drug task force, and it operates out of a warehouse on chicago's west side that just sort of fades into the background view of the neighborhood. if you look out, as we have done, it doesn't appear to have any normal police insignia signifying it is a precinct, like you wouldn't at your local police precinct. if you look closer, the signs are there. there's a check point out front with a yellow barrier to block traffic. there are both marked and unmarked cars in the yard. there is an evidence locker in homan square the cop say makes the whole place public. as we started investigating, we heard reports from lawyers and from police reform activists criminologist, that what happens in homan square beyond the sort of above invisible practices

involves things that you would only really hear about at cia black sites overseas. extended detentions, in which people are shackled and don't have records made of where they are. that might seem, on the face of it, mundane, into you think relatives and lawyers have no way when someone is taken there to figure out where these people are. as we at heard from the attorneys who had dealt with police there, was a really disturbing thing. finally, they had told us that when they went, as attorneys, to try to seek out there clients on homan square of the times they were able to find out someone was there, police would either turn them away or when they tried to ascertain where about information over the phone, they would get the runaround. maybe not telling them they were sure their clients were there or asking them, how do we know you're actually a lawyer? we subsequently found out in

2011, local activists and lawyers have brought this up with the chicago police and gotten the police to change some of their procedures homage to make it clear attorneys were allowed to visit. the we account cases even after that where attorney said -- we have found cases even after that where attorney said they were turned away after waiting outside for the better part of an hour. >> i want to get your response to the chicago police department's statement to your reports in the guardian about homan square. they wrote -- "cpd abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at homan square or any other cpd facility. if lawyers have a client detained at homan square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them. it also houses cpd's evidence recovered property section where the public is able to claim inventoried property." could you respond to what the chicago police department's response was to the report, and

also elaborate who exactly first likened this facility to a cia black site? >> first, to the chicago police loss response to our story, and i appreciate you allowing me to talk about it. they don't say when attorneys have the right to talk to the ir clients are when they can access them. they don't say what those records are. that would document someone's appearance at homan square. they don't say when those records have to be made or what method they are supposed to be public. they never address at all the central question of someone being book at homan square, of records being made available to the public, available to the lawyers and available to the families. we asked the police those questions when they issued as in other news organizations those statements, and we're still yet to hear anything. before we published this story days before, we sent an

extensive list of questions to the police and got nothing. i went to homan square on friday it was probably turned away. >> the mayor was running again for his office. did you go to mayor emanuel himself or to his office to ask some questions? >> i did not go to his office. one of my colleagues at the guardian has put questions to him and we will see what we got. >> i want to bring in victoria suter, who traveled to chicago may 12 12, 2012 to attend the nato protest. on may 16, she and 11 others were taken to homan square in chicago after police raided the apartment where they were staying. suter spent 18 hours in solitary confinement before being allowed to speak to a lawyer. she joins us now from charlotte. we welcome you to democracy now! , victoria.

you got in touch with us after we reported on the piece yesterday and said, wait a second, i am one of those people who was held at homan square. talk about your experience. >> in homan square itself, from the raid in the bridgeport neighborhood on the southside of chicago, i was put in an unmarked vehicle. it was the standard of work under -- standard undercover cop car. not being from chicago, i try to keep track of what turns they were making where at first. after a certain point, i could not keep up with it. i was are ready asking to see a lawyer. i kept asking, where are you taking the? where are you taking me? the only response i got was, we're going to give you a tour of hell on homan. >> what a second.

what do they say? we're going to give you a tour -- >> of hell on homan. when we arrived, it was dark. i could not see the outside of the building. but we went in through a garage. there were really large, like him a military vehicles. absolutely massive. one of the other people arrested in the raid with me, they took him in first and left me outside with another officer. then they took me inside. i was taken to a room, not particularly big. no windows. they put ankle shackles on me at that point. they cuffed my right arm to a bar that ran behind the bench. i stay there for 18 hours prior

to being able to see an attorney. >> did you ask to speak to an attorney before that 18 hour period? >> yes, i had been asking since the time of my arrest and the entire transport between bridgeport and homan. >> did you ever come to learn victoria, why the police had raided the apartment you were staying in and why you are detained for as long as you were and under the conditions you were? >> at that point in time, i had no idea what was going on. i was laying down to go to sleep when the raid occurred. you are going -- length down to go to sleep and all of a sudden, the doors are kicked in and guns are on you and you are being taken away in handcuffs and an unmarked car to this place the you know idea where you are, no one is telling you anything, no one is telling you what charges

are possibly being filed against you. it was all very chaotic and disorienting. as we continued asking while in homan, what are the charges? what are the charges? where are we? why are we here? we got no answers the entire time. >> after 18 hours, what were you charged with? >> i was not charged with anything. after 18 hours, i was transferred to the cook county jail at 26 and california on the west side. i was released several hours after my transfer in with no charges. i was told -- they knew i was there to protest nato. upon my release, i was told, if we see you out there this weekend, we're going to put you back in and charge you with these guys. but we still have no idea what

those charges were at that point in time. >> spencer ackerman, it found homan square has been in operation since the 1990's? >> they took over the facility itself in the late 1990's. >> who is they? >> the chicago police. i think was 1997 or so. they moved more and more operations in there. the period where it looks like, according to our sources, that they started operating the source of interrogations and detentions without booking and without legal access to seems to have really picked up around 2005. although, we're not totally ensure when in fact it starts. >> what are your intentions? >> i was investigating the story that amy mentioned about the connection between a chicago detective who became a guantanamo bay torturer, tortured a man named mohaemdou slahi. as i was discussing this with a

chicago police reform activist that guy mentioned to me that institutional problems with chicago policing ran so deep that chicago even operates its own form of a black site. i was just like, what? that doesn't happen in the united states nuts. i started looking at it further and talking to more and more attorneys, particularly, those who do frontline visits to police facilities. they said, no, there is this place called homan square. we try to get access and routinely we don't. one attorney tommy does become amongst people in his legal community is like an open secret where if you hear from someone that the relative has been picked up by police but there's no record of them in central booking they just figure, well, they must be at homan. >> we just showed two white prisoners at homan, brian jacob church and a clip of who you

interviewed, and victoria suter. you say mainly what we're talking about, people taken to the site as you call it, disappeared, are black and brown people in chicago. >> that's right. the attorneys who do this frontline police told me that typically, these are people of color who are most often impacted. including people, when we tried to is big with them, through their attorneys -- and we try to speak with them through their attorneys, declined at if you're there would be retaliation by the chicago police. >> were going to go to break and then talk about this police detective richard zuley who went from chicago to guantánamo and what happened there. we are also going to ask you about john burge, known for torturing people in police stations in chicago and what has happened to him. spencer ackerman has published a

two-part series on police abuse in chicago "the disappeared: , chicago police detain americans at abuse-laden 'black site'" and "bad lieutenant: american police brutality, exported from chicago to guantánamo." that is what we are talking about next. stay with us. m♪ [music break]

>> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. >> we're speaking to spencer ackerman of the guardian. last week he published a story that looked at richard zuley who used torture to extract confessions from minorities for years in chicago and then went on to work at guantánamo. this is a clip of one of the innocent men zuley interrogated in chicago. >> i was mounted to the wall and floor. i remained in that room

trough 2 linux. after the second line up, i asked zuley if anyone had picked out of the lineup. he said, no. and i said, see, i told you, you got the wrong guy. i haven't done anything. he smiled at me and said, we are charging you anyway. >> boyd served 23 years in prison before he was found to be wrongfully convicted. spencer, can you talk more about richard zuley and how you came across his police record? >> sure. the guardian excerpt of the guantanamo bay -- zoo is just one of the most brutal that we've ever known about thus far.

my editor asked me if i would go through the manuscript ahead of the excerpt conceive there were any new stories we might want to do out of it. one of the footnotes mentioned in government reports and other sources, including a really fantastic piece of reporting by the wall street journal, the lead interrogator during the most intense torturous period of slahi's interrogation was from richard zuley. i thought, i've never heard about a u.s. police officer being in any u.s. military or intelligence interrogation facility. what must his record in chicago have been like? from there found for cases including boards but also rights case against zuley got in contact with his lawyer and started pulling records to find out what this guy's record in chicago was. we found some really ominous parallels about how he police

chicago streets of what he did in guantanamo bay torture centers. clocks what happened? >> after 23 years of being put in prison on murder, that there was never any physical evidence that he committed, boyd was found in 2013 by investigation from the cook county states attorney to have his conviction voided and he was completely basis -- and was completely basis and no evidence to justify keeping him in prison, even know he observed 23 years. >> and the suit? >> after he got out, he and his attorney filed a civil rights suit to try to get some kind of justice. as well, trying to create more disclosure around the way chicago police practices have operated including richard zuley. >> this victim in guantánamo mohamedou ould slahi during interrogations at guantanamo , you report were approved by

then defense secretary donald rumsfeld. slahi detailed the treatment in his memoir, which was published . in this clip from the guardian's video report about his case, we hear his lawyer nancy hollander and actor dominic west reading from his diary. >> mohaemdou slahi was subjected to a whole list of torture techniques that have been approved by the secretary of defense. >> they told him they are taken my mother and put her in a single cell in guantánamo. and if you didn't give officials the information they expect to she would be severely tortured. >> significantly, they included what in guantánamo was known as

the frequent flyer program. and they called it that because they would not let people sleep and they proceeded to torture him. >> blindfolded, he tries to look. one of them hit me hard across the face and quickly put the goggles on my eyes, and a small bag over my head. they tightened the chains around my ankles and wrists. afterwards, i started to bleed. i thought they were going to execute me. >> mohaemdou slahi remains at guantánamo to this day and is yet to be charged with a crime. spencer ackerman, if you can talk about this and then also talk about whether the chicago media is following up on these explosive reports where you are making these connections? >> it wasn't just the military could not charge or anyone couldn't charge slahi with

anything, military investigators for the prosecution found the reason why they could not charge him with anything is what richard zuley did to mohaemdou slahi, that the torture that slahi was subjected to by the united states of america so tainted all of the evidence in this case that it became fundamentally an chargeable. in 2010, by the way, a federal judge ruled he had to be let go. barack obama justice department has appealed that decision and that is why slahi is still in guantanamo bay today. as we were reporting this, we found there were connections between the way zuley tortured slahi and his police work as a chicago detective. slahi was sure shackled for extended periods of time. that happened to boyd and others. johnson and griggs, for instance, were shackled between they say, 24 and 30 hours in their cases. andra griggs was suffering through heroin withdrawal was

not given medication for that. this was done as a method to try to get griggs and johnson to confess to crimes they say they never committed. those confessions formed the vast majority of the evidence against them. this was something we saw as well zuley doing at guantánamo. he told slahi, you can either be a witness or you can be a defendant. all the a to do was confess. slahi's torture much like the others, was so bad that he eventually just said, i'll sign whatever you put in front of me. he put in his book, if you want to buy i am selling. before that, just one of the methods zuley employed, zuley threatened to have his mother taken a guantanamo bay and what he described as the all-male environment. i don't think it is particularly hard to understand that threat. >> before we go, chicago has a long history of police torture. this month, the notorious chicago police commander jon

burge was released from a halfway house after he served 4.5 years for lying under oath. burge is accused of leading a ring that interrogated more than 100 african-american men in chicago in the 1970's and 1980's. they routinely used electric shock and suffocation with plastic bags and typewriter covers, among other methods, to extract confessions from men who were later shown to be innocent. the chicago torture justice memorial project documented some of the men's stories. this is shadeed mu'min. >> he handcuffed me real tight cut my circulation off. for about an hour. he came back and tried to talk it out. i told him i couldn't tell him anything. he said then that, oh, you're going to play tough. you will tell us what we want to know. i've been known to get out of people what i want. he got real upset, and said you will talk [bleep]

angry, he rushed to the typewriter and took the cover off and try to cram it over my head. it was like he was a madman. i was trying to get my arms from behind the chair but i couldn't do anything. i passed out. like i say, he gave me a breath of air. i came to, conscious, and he said, are you ready to talk? i said, i don't have anything to say. he did it again. the third time i said, i'll do whatever you want to know, just don't do this again. >> shadeed mu'min speaking about his interrogation by former chicago police commander john burge. statistics compiled by the people's law office show chicago has paid at least $64 million in settlements and judgments in civil rights cases related to burge's police abuses alone. the chicago reader reported some of the burge techniques may have been learned when he was in vietnam where he served as a military policeman. spencer, we will and on jon burge.

any connection to richard zuley? >> not typically. even though they served in chicago around the same time, it doesn't seem to actually worked together. nevertheless, there is a context for this in chicago. there's a long-standing tradition of police abuses, primarily against african-american residents of chicago. it fits now with what we're reporting is this uncomfortable intersection between both that long and nefarious history of abuse against african-americans, primarily in chicago, in this post-9/11 era in which secret detention, longtime interrogations without charge and so forth, seem to be now increasingly influencing domestic police work. >> is the chicago media picking this up, especially in the time of the mayoral reelection race? >> they seem to be running reports based primarily on the chicago police denial. we will see that changes.

>> spencer ackerman is national security editor at the guardian where he has published a two-part series on police abuse in chicago, "the disappeared: chicago police detain americans at abuse-laden 'black site'" and "bad lieutenant: american police brutality, exported from chicago to guantánamo." we'll link to them at our website as well as your interview as well with homan victoria suter. this is democracy now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. when we come back, we go to northern iraq to speak with journalist patrick cockburn. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

>> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. >> return out to the middle

east. militants from the supper claimed islamic state have reportedly conducted at least 220 people from the syrian question villages in northeastern syria to the stern observatory for human rights the islamic state has seized 10 villages. meanwhile, the bbc and washington post have revealed the identity of the british man nicknamed to hottie john husband featured in several beheading videos. yellen say it is -- people say it is a man who was known to british security services. he first appeared in a video last august when he allegedly killed the american journalist james foley. in other news, two us-led coalition airstrikes have reportedly killed over three dozen people in iraq, including at least 20 civilians. sources told reuters a strike and the syrian border held nine civilians in 17 islamic state militants while a separate bombing west of baghdad killed

11 civilians and six militants. the pentagon has also announced a shipment of 10,000 u.s. and 16 rivals and other military supplies to iraq this week as u.s. troops trained iraqi forces were in operation this spring to try to retake iraq's second biggest city mosul. >> condemning the islamic state for destroying the mosul to look library which housed more than 8000 rare books and manuscripts. unesco described the incident as "one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history." earlier today, video was posted online that appears to show members of the so-called islamic state smashing ancient artifacts inside a mosul museum. the video shows man toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. the guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a searing

protective deity that dates back to the night century --9th-- 9th bc. we now go to patrick cockburn middle east correspondent for the independent. his latest book is titled, "the rise of islamic state: isis and the new sunni revolution." one of his recent articles from iraq is headlined, "private donors from gulf oil states helping to bankroll salaries of up to 100,000 isis fighters." last year, he received the foreign affairs journalist of the year award. he joins us now from erbil, the capital of iraqi kurdistan. why don't we go right to the headline of that piece, patrick? talk about who is funding the supper claimed islamic state -- self-proclaimed islamic state. >> it looks as though the islamic state has much more money than it ought to have. it has raised, certainly, 100000 and getting on to 200,000

soldiers. they are all being paid. it recently lowered the age of conscription below 18. if you join up, you don't get much, you get $400 a month. if you're a foreign fighter, you get $800 a month and your keep. this is a pretty large army they're putting in the field, and they don't have many soldiers of revenue -- sources of revenue. they have some oil and some taxes. so there's a great big gap which senior kurdish officials and officials in baghdad have told me that there convinced come from private donors in the oil states of the gulf. that is the only real explanation for that. >> patrick cockburn you have been talking to people who have been fleeing muzzle, the city now entirely controlled by the islamic state. could you explain what people have been saying about what conditions are like their? >> conditions are pretty grim.

there's a shortage of electricity, a shortage of clean water. that is so bad, that lots of people are in hospital with various complaints, illnesses because of eating dirty water. women forced to wear -- one woman whose eyes weren't quite covered was taken to a police station and was forced to bite on a sort of donkey or horse's bit, and to bite so hard until he was blood all over her mouth and she and go to hospital. it is pretty vicious, but one should also say two things. one, the sunni arabs in mosul

are very frightened of isis, what they call daesh of isis, but also friend of the idea of the iraqi army or the shia militias capturing mosul. so they don't really know which way to go. i was talking this morning to some people in a refugee camp here in erbil who is left mosul because their parents had been in the iraqi police force. what happens was, they had fled mosul but then isis goes to their houses and blows them up and then puts the video of the explosion on the social media so -- saying, this is a message even people who fled, that they are blowing up their houses. >> patrick cockburn, given the brutality you're describing, why is it that people in some cases as you say, are equally scared of the iraqi military taking over?

>> because every place the shia militia -- is mostly the fighting forces of the baghdad government is not the iraqi army. the iraq he army has failed to take back any city in iraq or town in iraq since the beginning of last year since fallujah fell to isis. but the shia militias, probably about 120,000 men, the iraq he army probably has about 40,000 to 50,000, where they take over cities or towns they haven't taken many, but were they have taken them over or villages, they treat all the inhabitants as if it were members of isis. it doesn't matter if these people are completely opposed to isis, there are still treated as members of isis. so the young men disappear and in some cases are killed and in some cases are tortured or put in prison. houses are burned, people are

driven out. there's one other point, a very important one want to make which i don't the people have taken on board. as you know, the u.s. government, the pentagon and the iraqi prime minister, have said there is going to be an offensive to capture mosul, but the major relief organizations, the world food program, are believed that if there is an attack on mosul, there's one to be next to this of up to one million refugees, basically, sunni arabs live in mosul, that they will flee the city when airstrikes intensify. they believe it will come out under attack. at the moment, they cannot get into the kurdish region. they are banned. they are going all be on the road. there he positioning supplies for one of the biggest exodus of

refugees we have seen, i don't know for how long, but it is going to be massive. there will be terrible suffering and many will die. >> already the swath of land controlled covering millions and millions of people. is the islamic state going to last? also, if you could respond to the latest identification, supposedly, of the man that has been called jihadi john, standing in the video that he was about to execute the journalist american james foley and the reddish security said they were following him. the significance of this, three arrest in brooklyn these young people were supposedly going to join up with islamic state in syria, the three girls in britain, the young women who supposedly have gone to join. can you put all of this together? yeah, i mean, they're said to be about 20,000 foreign to hot --

jihadis. one of the amazing things, they're quite easily able to cross the turkish frontier into syria into the islamic state. but despite the fact turkey is meant to be part of the coalition to eliminate the islamic state. but there's a 500 mile border between syria and turkey and is still seems to be generally open. now when these foreigners arrived in the islamic state they're often not much good as fighters because those from western europe and america that don't speak arabic, even those that do are not professional soldiers. so they often become suicide bombers or are given particularly high profile jobs for execution and so forth. the islamic state is very obsessed almost with the idea of

dominating the news agenda and it doesn't really matter how they do it. so they know that if you have a japanese hostage and you demand $200 million in ransom, that that is going to be leading the news. for a long time, cutting off peoples heads led the news. then they were getting used to that so they burned to debt this for damien pilot -- jordanian pilot in a cage. knowing again it would dominate the news. they do it particularly when it had a military setback, when things aren't going too well on the battlefront and they want the news to be dominated by some of us are in a power on their part -- assertion of power on their part which is usually a heinous atrocity, but they feel they have achieved their aim if that is whatever body is talking about. they said at one moment on social media that media is half

jihadi. it is something they do very consciously and something they use, particularly foreigners entering the islamic state, as a method of publicity. >> will they last? patrick cockburn, will they last? do you think islamic state, and what do you think should be done? >> will they last? well, at the moment, last year they had a 100 day campaign in which they captured an area which is larger than great britain. they defeated the iraqi army defeated -- and flicked it defeats on the syrian army and the iraqi kurds amongst everybody else. since then, they have a been quite so successful against the syrian kurds and others, but

they control pretty much the same area. their recruiting vast numbers of people. west of erbil yesterday, i was talking to a commander. although he said that isis was losing a lot of men in attacks they had been making, they were still able to recruit people and recruit people from the local area. i think abroad, they get the her -- impression it is foreign jihadi. it is mostly syrians and iraqis. there are 6 million or 7 million people within the confines of the islamic state. if you are calling up all the young men, you can put a very large army into the field. to defeat them, we are the iraq he army hrereere, but it has not recaptured a single city or town since january of last year. so talk of them defeating the islamic state, of taking mosul

in these other cities, looks pretty optimistic. in syria, the syrian kurds are fighting for jihads. they have been advancing, that is one of the reasons these poor syrian christians have been kidnapped by atomic state was supported by u.s. airstrikes, but that only really happens where there are a lot of kurds in syria, which is not that big. and the rest of syria, it is very noticeable the u.s. airstrikes are not against islamic state where it is combating the syrian army. so the pressure is there but it is not sufficient to defeat the islamic state, to my mind. the islamic state plus many enemies are all there, but they gave each other almost as much if not more, than they hate the islamic state. >> patrick cockburn, thank you for being with us, middle east correspondent for the independent.

his latest book is titled, "the rise of islamic state: isis and the new sunni revolution." we willing to your article on democracynow.org. [captioning made possible by democracy now!]

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