Guantanamo on the Hudson: Pier 57 - did the RNC rent it for NYC Cops?

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Thursday September 16, 2004 14:16 by redjade

Time to use the F-Word?

Here's a creepy story that is either lefty conspiracy theory stuff - or something much worse.

Did the Republican Party rent Pier 57 for the purpose of creating a political Gulag & stuffing political dissenters into it with the collaboration of NYC Police?

If so, its a whole new spin on the concept of 'prison privatisation'

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other info and speculation
http://nyc.indymedia.org/feature/display/120464/index.php

Also read:
http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2004_09_05.html#001736

Source of following info:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=6210

My 21-year old daughter disappeared from NYC last Tuesday afternoon when  walking with friends through a park where no protest was being held -- and was held prisoner -- without being charged -- by the NYPD for three days. The first day and night she spent in an unsafe and inhumane facility at Pier 57 ("Little Guantanamo") provided by the Republican Party. 

Yes, it was managed by the Republican National Committee. It was leased by the RNC to hold political dissenters who disagreed with the Bush administration. The second two days, my daughter was in a city jail in Manhattan, where her treatment improved.

[....]

The notorious Pier 57 (owned by the Hudson River Trust--a city/state consortium) was dubbed "Little Guantanamo" by reporters who also got caught up in police sweeps and who said it looked like the Guantanamo Bay prison built by the USA to hold the Al Qaeda terrorist political prisoners in Cuba. Pier 57 was leased by the RNC before their convention. 

They arranged for the NYPD to put up the chain link holding pens with razor wire on top in the old Pier 57 warehouse that had oil, gas and asbestos dust on the floor from a previous fire.

[....]

My husband called the NYPD to ask who had issued a Certificate of Occupancy or Fire Safety Inspection Certificate and who was managing Pier 57. He was given the number for the Republican National Committee. 

Yes, My husband and I looked at each other in silent, cold horror.

In America? The Republicans have set up a private detention camp for their political prisoners that can hold 1000 under inhumane and unsafe conditions! My husband slowly dialed that number, got the RNC, and the Republican rep who answered the phone said, in answer to my husband's inquiries about safety: "those protesters don't deserve a Holiday Inn, and they're all criminals anyway!" ....Say what?! My daughter, who doesn't smoke or drink or do drugs and is a practicing Buddhist Vegan? A criminal?