al Khalifa regime learns lesson of using “prison as a political weapon” from “friends” in the USA

Katherine Olejnik and Matt Duran Have Not Been Charged with Any Crime, and Yet They Have Been Locked Up for Three Months and Counting… Duran, like Olejnik, believes that when the FBI comes knocking, handing out subpoenas, legally compelling them to tell a federal prosecutor about their fellow citizens’ private lives and political beliefs, they have a duty to object. And, like Bartleby the Scrivener, their most powerful tool of protest against a force like the federal government is to simply and politely say: “I would prefer not to.” (It’s worth remembering that Bartleby’s quiet, stubborn “I would prefer not to” eventually lands him in prison.)

Christmas in Prison
by Brendan Kiley – The Stranger

The visiting room of the SeaTac Federal Detention Center is bleak. Prison is supposed to be bleak, but it’s difficult to appreciate how bleak it is until you’ve walked inside—past the grim security checkpoint, the sallow-faced chaplain with the giant keys hanging from his pants, the many heavy doors that slam shut behind you like a metal thunderclap, the off-white walls and institutional lighting that seem to suck the color out of everyone’s hair and clothes, the frosted-over windows to block any view of the outside world, and into the visiting room with its plastic chairs arranged in sets of four with a guard sitting in a high booth, presiding over the room like a bored judge.

And the waiting. Lots and lots of waiting.

The large visiting room, with many doors leading off to other places, also serves as a transit point in the prison. Men (and the occasional woman) wearing prison khakis sit, staring into the middle distance with flat expressions, waiting until a guard, sometimes wearing latex gloves, opens a door and barks out names. Then the inmates get up, sometimes eagerly and sometimes hesitantly, and walk into some other chamber of the federal fortress.

Amid all the bleakness, inmate Katherine Olejnik seems surprisingly smiley and optimistic. She is one of two inmates I’ve come to visit—the other is Matt Duran—who have been sitting in this prison for around three months. (Duran a few days more than that, Olejnik a few days less.)

They haven’t been accused of a crime. They haven’t even been arrested for a crime. They’re here because they refused to answer questions for a federal prosecutor, in front of a grand jury, about people they may (or may not) know: who those people are, who those people hang out with, and what political opinions those people hold.

Supposedly, that federal prosecutor is interested in the smashup in Seattle on May Day and finding the demonstrators who broke the windows of a federal courthouse. But Olejnik says the prosecutor only asked her four questions about May Day, which she answered truthfully: Was she in Seattle on May Day? (No.) Where was she? (Working at her waitress/bartending job in Olympia.) Had she been in Seattle a week before or a week after May Day? (No.) Had anybody talked to her about May Day? (No. In fact, she says she learned most of what she knows about the smashup while she was in court.)

That was all he asked about the May Day vandalism.

Then, she says, the prosecutor began rattling off names and showing photographs of people, asking about their social contacts and political opinions. Olejnik guesses he asked “at least 50 questions” in that vein, compared to the four about May Day. That’s when she shut down, refused to answer, was found in contempt of court, and was sent to SeaTac FDC.

She doesn’t regret it. “I truly believe that people have the right to believe whatever they want politically,” Olejnik says, sitting in a chair beside me in her prison khakis. “And it’s none of the government’s business.”

As far as she can tell, she’s not in prison because she couldn’t help with a vandalism investigation. She’s there because she refused, on principle, to help the federal government draw a social map of radicals and leftists in the Northwest.

Grand juries are secret—prosecutors are the only attorneys allowed in the room—but people who’ve been subpoenaed to appear before them are allowed to talk afterward about what happened. The two attorneys for Olejnik and Duran, who sit with us during the interviews in the SeaTac FDC, vaguely say the versions of events described by their clients are consistent with what they read in the transcripts. The US Attorney’s Office has repeatedly said it cannot comment on anything related to a grand jury, because grand juries are secret. So we have to rely on Duran and Olejnik and their attorneys’ vague corroboration.

I have to interview Duran separately, because the guards don’t want him and Olejnik—close friends and roommates at the time they got the subpoenas—to see each other. (They say they passed each other once in the visiting area and waved at each other, and the guards grumbled about that.) How, I ask Duran, would you explain why you’re here to people on the outside?

“Not everyone will understand,” Duran says in a soft voice. “You have to be in a different state of mind to be willing to go to jail to protect someone you basically have no knowledge of.” He talks about his years as a young student in the Army ROTC, when veterans would come and talk about serving their country because they felt a sense of duty. Not answering questions about other people, he says, “is the duty I can perform.”

Duran, like Olejnik, believes that when the FBI comes knocking, handing out subpoenas, legally compelling them to tell a federal prosecutor about their fellow citizens’ private lives and political beliefs, they have a duty to object. And, like Bartleby the Scrivener, their most powerful tool of protest against a force like the federal government is to simply and politely say: “I would prefer not to.” (It’s worth remembering that Bartleby’s quiet, stubborn “I would prefer not to” eventually lands him in prison.)

And that’s why they’re spending the holidays in prison. …more