"Where Apple makes its money" - Martyn Turner, The Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland
Showing posts with label unethical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unethical. Show all posts
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Canadian mining company spied on opponents & activists in Brazil
Canada may fly the flag of "a peaceful nation" or relatively better than its Anglo-Saxon counterparts in US & UK, around the world, but Canadian companies are famous in developing countries, in South America & Africa, for unethical business practices.
Be it Kinross, or Goldcorp, or SNC-Lavalin; they have all been exposed or sued in the past decade for unethical practices, ranging from bribery scandals in Africa to destroying the environment, of the surroundings where their operations are based, in South America.
Ironically, these Canadian companies are also considered some of the best companies in Canada, because of their management team, environmental stewardship, & overall business management. They return good money to their shareholders & investors love them.
It is one thing to be actively destroying your own backyard (Canadian companies being involved in Canadian oilsands in Alberta & destroying the environment there), but it is very wrong to be destroying the environment of a developing country, & then digging your heels that we are not destroying the environment in the face of clear evidence.
Most of the companies from the Western developed countries, in one way or another, exploit & destroy the developing countries. They all have long ethical codes of conducts, but they are written in such a way, that they support unethical business practices. So, besides the mining & energy companies, other companies, for example, Nestle is famous for robbing small villages & communities of their precious clean water resources to sell that water to the millions around the world.
Honesty & fairness in the developed world are only for their own citizens, & only rich business & political elites among them; not for everyone else around them. Talking about spreading democracy, freedom, free speech etc. are all smoke & mirrors for the ignorant billions of people around the world.
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... Paracatu is the epicentre of Brazil’s mining production, in the north of the state of Minas Gerais, which generates almost one-third of Brazil’s total mining production.
The exploitation of gold started in Paracatu as early as 1722. ... Since the 1990s the hunt has moved from the river banks to underground deposits. ...
Booming gold prices
In 2005, Canadian company Kinross – which is listed in the New York Stock Exchange & owns gold mines in Chile, US, Russia & Ghana, among other countries – took over the mining concession in Paracatu. During a period in which gold prices rose to historical new heights in global markets, Kinross invested $1.86bn in the site, tripling annual production to the current 15 tonnes & making Paracatu the most productive gold mine in Brazil. As the gold in Paracatu takes the form of a powder & not grain or nuggets, the company had to greatly intensify mining activities to keep production up. Today as many as 160 dynamite explosions are carried out daily to dig the Morro do Ouro, the Golden Hill, as locals refer to the area where the main deposits are found.
As a consequence, the local geography has been profoundly transformed. As you approach the mining area we witness an immense crater that covers 615 hectares, half the size of Heathrow’s airport, & resembles a lunar landscape. The only signs of life are the imposing bulldozers & the high-wheeled vehicles that transport the rocks to the plant. There, toxic chemicals, including cyanide, are employed to separate out the gold powder, which is later molten in ingots & transported by helicopter to São Paulo for export around the globe.
Arsenic health risks
While the visual impact seems hard to deny – in addition to the mining area, two large dams the size of an extra Heathrow airport are used for toxic waste disposal – many argue that the mine poses a threat to the local environment & to the health of the 90,000 Paracatu residents. Not only is dynamite used to access the gold reserves as close as 200 metres from the urban area, the precious metal is mixed in the rock with arsenic, a carcinogenic.
Arsenic is commonly found in gold mines, but in Paracatu it is of particular concern. For each tonne of rock removed only 0.4 grams of gold is recovered & 1kg of arsenic is released into the air & groundwater, according to Márcio José dos Santos, a geologist & local activist.
“Nobody knows how much arsenic is going to the city. The northeasterly wind here means that the arsenic travels in the air from the mine to the urban area. People are inhaling the toxic dust & consequently are inhaling arsenic,” explains José. Sergio Ulhoa Dani, a local physician & also an opponent of the mine, argued in a recent scientific article that “the potential damage of arsenic in a gold mine like the one in Paracatu could impact 7 trillion people”.
Many in the city wonder if their life is at risk, while the word “cancer” has become a taboo. Data from Paracatu’s city council shows that the cancer mortality rate in the town is similar to the rest of the country. Critics argue that statistics from the local government are unreliable. As Paracatu lacks medical institutions, patients must go to hospitals located hundreds of kilometres away to receive treatment & so are not counted in the city’s official data.
Opponents face harassment & threats
The attitude of the company is also under scrutiny. According to documents seen by The Guardian & interviews with former employees, several Kinross’ employees worked as an intelligence unit to track any potential activity against the mine or the company’s reputation.
In an interview with the Guardian, Gilberto Azevedo, general manager of the mine, denied any risk to the health or the environment. “We monitor everything. People have nothing to fear, because we have everything under control. We regularly make environmental & biological tests, & we have hired external sources to carry studies. They all show there is no risk.”
He also underlined the economic importance of the company’s activity for the region. In 2014, Kinross paid about $10m in taxes & currently employs 3,300 people in the mine, about 8% of the active population in the city.
However, tension is perceptible. As we drive through the public roads bordering the concession, an armed guard who had been following the car for an hour brings us to a halt & questions us.
Dozens of documents & internal emails seen by The Guardian show that in 2012 & 2013 Kinross had a policy in Paracatu of regularly monitoring potential opponents, including the former mayor Almir Paraca – known for being outspoken against the mine – & several union leaders.
“They monitor social movements, politicians, neighbourhood associations & their representatives, environmental activists, union leaders... They even monitor what some Kinross’s employees do at their free time. The main goal is to hide or repress any action, demonstration or reference against the mining company or their interests”, said one of the sources, knowledgeable of Kinross’ policies because of his/her former post at the company.
And at least 2 local activists – Rafaela Xavier Luiz & Evane Lopes - have had to leave the city in recent months after they received death threats, which they argue were linked to their opposition to the mine.
“We have nothing to do with this. Kinross is a company that dialogues with the community,” says Azevedo, when asked if the enterprise was in any way involved in the threats to activists. Kinross also denied it monitored activists or opponents.
Be it Kinross, or Goldcorp, or SNC-Lavalin; they have all been exposed or sued in the past decade for unethical practices, ranging from bribery scandals in Africa to destroying the environment, of the surroundings where their operations are based, in South America.
Ironically, these Canadian companies are also considered some of the best companies in Canada, because of their management team, environmental stewardship, & overall business management. They return good money to their shareholders & investors love them.
It is one thing to be actively destroying your own backyard (Canadian companies being involved in Canadian oilsands in Alberta & destroying the environment there), but it is very wrong to be destroying the environment of a developing country, & then digging your heels that we are not destroying the environment in the face of clear evidence.
Most of the companies from the Western developed countries, in one way or another, exploit & destroy the developing countries. They all have long ethical codes of conducts, but they are written in such a way, that they support unethical business practices. So, besides the mining & energy companies, other companies, for example, Nestle is famous for robbing small villages & communities of their precious clean water resources to sell that water to the millions around the world.
Honesty & fairness in the developed world are only for their own citizens, & only rich business & political elites among them; not for everyone else around them. Talking about spreading democracy, freedom, free speech etc. are all smoke & mirrors for the ignorant billions of people around the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... Paracatu is the epicentre of Brazil’s mining production, in the north of the state of Minas Gerais, which generates almost one-third of Brazil’s total mining production.
The exploitation of gold started in Paracatu as early as 1722. ... Since the 1990s the hunt has moved from the river banks to underground deposits. ...
Booming gold prices
In 2005, Canadian company Kinross – which is listed in the New York Stock Exchange & owns gold mines in Chile, US, Russia & Ghana, among other countries – took over the mining concession in Paracatu. During a period in which gold prices rose to historical new heights in global markets, Kinross invested $1.86bn in the site, tripling annual production to the current 15 tonnes & making Paracatu the most productive gold mine in Brazil. As the gold in Paracatu takes the form of a powder & not grain or nuggets, the company had to greatly intensify mining activities to keep production up. Today as many as 160 dynamite explosions are carried out daily to dig the Morro do Ouro, the Golden Hill, as locals refer to the area where the main deposits are found.
As a consequence, the local geography has been profoundly transformed. As you approach the mining area we witness an immense crater that covers 615 hectares, half the size of Heathrow’s airport, & resembles a lunar landscape. The only signs of life are the imposing bulldozers & the high-wheeled vehicles that transport the rocks to the plant. There, toxic chemicals, including cyanide, are employed to separate out the gold powder, which is later molten in ingots & transported by helicopter to São Paulo for export around the globe.
Arsenic health risks
While the visual impact seems hard to deny – in addition to the mining area, two large dams the size of an extra Heathrow airport are used for toxic waste disposal – many argue that the mine poses a threat to the local environment & to the health of the 90,000 Paracatu residents. Not only is dynamite used to access the gold reserves as close as 200 metres from the urban area, the precious metal is mixed in the rock with arsenic, a carcinogenic.
Arsenic is commonly found in gold mines, but in Paracatu it is of particular concern. For each tonne of rock removed only 0.4 grams of gold is recovered & 1kg of arsenic is released into the air & groundwater, according to Márcio José dos Santos, a geologist & local activist.
“Nobody knows how much arsenic is going to the city. The northeasterly wind here means that the arsenic travels in the air from the mine to the urban area. People are inhaling the toxic dust & consequently are inhaling arsenic,” explains José. Sergio Ulhoa Dani, a local physician & also an opponent of the mine, argued in a recent scientific article that “the potential damage of arsenic in a gold mine like the one in Paracatu could impact 7 trillion people”.
Many in the city wonder if their life is at risk, while the word “cancer” has become a taboo. Data from Paracatu’s city council shows that the cancer mortality rate in the town is similar to the rest of the country. Critics argue that statistics from the local government are unreliable. As Paracatu lacks medical institutions, patients must go to hospitals located hundreds of kilometres away to receive treatment & so are not counted in the city’s official data.
Opponents face harassment & threats
The attitude of the company is also under scrutiny. According to documents seen by The Guardian & interviews with former employees, several Kinross’ employees worked as an intelligence unit to track any potential activity against the mine or the company’s reputation.
In an interview with the Guardian, Gilberto Azevedo, general manager of the mine, denied any risk to the health or the environment. “We monitor everything. People have nothing to fear, because we have everything under control. We regularly make environmental & biological tests, & we have hired external sources to carry studies. They all show there is no risk.”
He also underlined the economic importance of the company’s activity for the region. In 2014, Kinross paid about $10m in taxes & currently employs 3,300 people in the mine, about 8% of the active population in the city.
However, tension is perceptible. As we drive through the public roads bordering the concession, an armed guard who had been following the car for an hour brings us to a halt & questions us.
Dozens of documents & internal emails seen by The Guardian show that in 2012 & 2013 Kinross had a policy in Paracatu of regularly monitoring potential opponents, including the former mayor Almir Paraca – known for being outspoken against the mine – & several union leaders.
“They monitor social movements, politicians, neighbourhood associations & their representatives, environmental activists, union leaders... They even monitor what some Kinross’s employees do at their free time. The main goal is to hide or repress any action, demonstration or reference against the mining company or their interests”, said one of the sources, knowledgeable of Kinross’ policies because of his/her former post at the company.
And at least 2 local activists – Rafaela Xavier Luiz & Evane Lopes - have had to leave the city in recent months after they received death threats, which they argue were linked to their opposition to the mine.
“We have nothing to do with this. Kinross is a company that dialogues with the community,” says Azevedo, when asked if the enterprise was in any way involved in the threats to activists. Kinross also denied it monitored activists or opponents.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Thailand's crackdown on 'wombs for rent'
As I previously blogged that how everything of ours, tangible or intangible, is up for sale, this story fits right in. Everything of ours has been commoditized & ready to be sold. These women are not doing it for the fun of it, but these Thai, Vietnamese, & even Indian (not in this story) women are put into such a dire position, financially, that they are ready to lease out their wombs.
Now, women, most likely from developed countries, who can't conceive child due to health reasons, or won't conceive child due to vanity (don't want to "destroy" their figure or can't take the pain of childbirth) can outsource this function to a poor woman in a developing country. It seems nothing is sacred enough to not outsource.
Similar to how outsourcing of manufacturing & clerical jobs to developing countries raised multiple ethical issues in regards to working conditions in those developing countries, this "womb-for-rent" program also raised several complicated & ethical issues.
Can a country effectively control this process & make it better through laws & regulations or simply shut it down? I think not. The process was already sort of running underground with some people abusing this program. Now, the laws will essentially further make this go underground & more women will be abused more severely, & the abusers will most likely won't be punished.
Why this process can't be improved through laws? Because, these poor women are especially sought out for these tasks & since, they need money desperately, they will be willing to do anything at any cost.
Also, this process won't grow much love & won't grow the bond stronger between a mother & her child. Why? Because, it's simply unnatural. The love between a child & a mother starts & grows stronger during those 9 months of pregnancy. Any mother will testify to it. Heck, the women in this story had a hard time giving those kids, for whom they were merely surrogates, to their biological parents. How can a mother who didn't endure those 9 months of pregnancy hardships can ever truly love a child, who is still her own flesh & blood, like a mother who goes through the pregnancy & has a spiritual, & flesh & blood link with that little fetus in her womb?
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When a surrogate baby scandal erupted in Thailand last year, many in the country did not know what to expect next.
First there was the young boy, apparently abandoned by the Australian couple who had commissioned a Thai surrogate mother to carry him.
The boy had Down's syndrome, but the couple had taken his twin sister back to Australia with them.
Then there were the 12 babies found living in a single apartment with nannies, all fathered by the same, mysterious young Japanese man.
Many more babies had already been spirited out of Thailand.
Today the Australian boy - named Gammy - lives with the woman who was paid to give birth to him, seemingly a loved member of his adopted family.
"I don't regret anything about the surrogacy", Pattaramon Chanbua told me. "I don't blame anyone. To me, Gammy is a blessing."
Mitsutoki Shigeta, the mystery Japanese man, is still fighting to get custody of the 12 babies he sired through various Thai surrogates.
Now, 5 years after it was first drafted, the Thai parliament has passed a law which it hopes will shut down the "wombs-for-rent" business for good.
Foreigners are banned from seeking surrogates in Thailand. Thai couples can find surrogate parents, but not through agents, or on any kind of commercial basis.
At the heart of the business are hard-up Thai women, who see 9 months carrying someone else's child as a relatively easy way to make good money.
Daeng, a factory worker living outside Bangkok, is another. A single mother in her 30s, she agreed to carry twins for Mr. Shigeta.
When the time came to hand them over, she admitted it was hard.
"I carried them for 9 months, & I loved them," she said. But she went through with the contract, & "would do it again - so would anybody - because of the money".
Daeng says she was paid the equivalent of 10 years' salary.
Other women have had unhappier surrogacy experiences.
4 years ago, 15 Vietnamese women were found in a Bangkok apartment, seven of them pregnant.
Some of them said they had been lured there with the promise of well-paid jobs; 2 said they had been raped.
A Taiwanese company called Babe-101 was accused by anti-trafficking groups of being behind the operation, but the police never pressed charges, & the doctor who supervised the conceptions & the births is still practising at a well-known Bangkok hospital.
Like much of Thailand's medical industry, the surrogacy business is profit-driven & poorly regulated.
The surrogate business in Thailand has often been a shadowy, unaccountable one. Now the practice has been more or less outlawed, there are justified fears that, with so much money on offer, it will simply be driven underground.
"We have no law enforcement", admits Dr Somsak Lolekha of the Thai Medical Council. "Just like drinking & driving. We have the law. But they never enforce it."
Now, women, most likely from developed countries, who can't conceive child due to health reasons, or won't conceive child due to vanity (don't want to "destroy" their figure or can't take the pain of childbirth) can outsource this function to a poor woman in a developing country. It seems nothing is sacred enough to not outsource.
Similar to how outsourcing of manufacturing & clerical jobs to developing countries raised multiple ethical issues in regards to working conditions in those developing countries, this "womb-for-rent" program also raised several complicated & ethical issues.
Can a country effectively control this process & make it better through laws & regulations or simply shut it down? I think not. The process was already sort of running underground with some people abusing this program. Now, the laws will essentially further make this go underground & more women will be abused more severely, & the abusers will most likely won't be punished.
Why this process can't be improved through laws? Because, these poor women are especially sought out for these tasks & since, they need money desperately, they will be willing to do anything at any cost.
Also, this process won't grow much love & won't grow the bond stronger between a mother & her child. Why? Because, it's simply unnatural. The love between a child & a mother starts & grows stronger during those 9 months of pregnancy. Any mother will testify to it. Heck, the women in this story had a hard time giving those kids, for whom they were merely surrogates, to their biological parents. How can a mother who didn't endure those 9 months of pregnancy hardships can ever truly love a child, who is still her own flesh & blood, like a mother who goes through the pregnancy & has a spiritual, & flesh & blood link with that little fetus in her womb?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
When a surrogate baby scandal erupted in Thailand last year, many in the country did not know what to expect next.
First there was the young boy, apparently abandoned by the Australian couple who had commissioned a Thai surrogate mother to carry him.
The boy had Down's syndrome, but the couple had taken his twin sister back to Australia with them.
Then there were the 12 babies found living in a single apartment with nannies, all fathered by the same, mysterious young Japanese man.
Many more babies had already been spirited out of Thailand.
Today the Australian boy - named Gammy - lives with the woman who was paid to give birth to him, seemingly a loved member of his adopted family.
"I don't regret anything about the surrogacy", Pattaramon Chanbua told me. "I don't blame anyone. To me, Gammy is a blessing."
Mitsutoki Shigeta, the mystery Japanese man, is still fighting to get custody of the 12 babies he sired through various Thai surrogates.
Now, 5 years after it was first drafted, the Thai parliament has passed a law which it hopes will shut down the "wombs-for-rent" business for good.
Foreigners are banned from seeking surrogates in Thailand. Thai couples can find surrogate parents, but not through agents, or on any kind of commercial basis.
At the heart of the business are hard-up Thai women, who see 9 months carrying someone else's child as a relatively easy way to make good money.
Daeng, a factory worker living outside Bangkok, is another. A single mother in her 30s, she agreed to carry twins for Mr. Shigeta.
When the time came to hand them over, she admitted it was hard.
"I carried them for 9 months, & I loved them," she said. But she went through with the contract, & "would do it again - so would anybody - because of the money".
Daeng says she was paid the equivalent of 10 years' salary.
Other women have had unhappier surrogacy experiences.
4 years ago, 15 Vietnamese women were found in a Bangkok apartment, seven of them pregnant.
Some of them said they had been lured there with the promise of well-paid jobs; 2 said they had been raped.
A Taiwanese company called Babe-101 was accused by anti-trafficking groups of being behind the operation, but the police never pressed charges, & the doctor who supervised the conceptions & the births is still practising at a well-known Bangkok hospital.
Like much of Thailand's medical industry, the surrogacy business is profit-driven & poorly regulated.
The surrogate business in Thailand has often been a shadowy, unaccountable one. Now the practice has been more or less outlawed, there are justified fears that, with so much money on offer, it will simply be driven underground.
"We have no law enforcement", admits Dr Somsak Lolekha of the Thai Medical Council. "Just like drinking & driving. We have the law. But they never enforce it."
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Brutal Guantanamo interrogator accused of planting evidence
A Guantanamo Bay interrogator responsible for implementing brutal methods at the prison allegedly used similar tactics to extract murder confessions from non-white citizens during his 30-year spell as a Chicago detective.
Richard Zuley is accused of shackling suspects to police precinct walls for hours on end, threatening to harm their families & pressurizing them into implicating themselves & others.
Apparently targeting minority Americans, the detective's brutal regime resulted in at least 1 wrongful conviction - & other cases being thrown into doubt following accusations of abuse.
The shocking details, uncovered in an investigation by the Guardian, further damage the reputation of a country still reeling from recent revelations of wartime torture by the CIA.
Zuley was a detective on Chicago's north side from 1977 to 2007 & allegedly spent years engaging in brutal interrogation tactics, which are said to have included threatening subjects with the death penalty if they failed to cooperate.
He was also accused of planting evidence in one high-profile murder case where there was pressure to gain a speedy conviction.
As a Navy reserve lieutenant, he also carried out work for the military, telling a Chicago court in the mid 1990s that he did counter-terrorism work for Naval intelligence while continuing his role as a detective.
He was recruited to the Guantanamo Bay operation in 2002 - with U.S. military commanders believing he was just the man they had been searching for - having spent 3 decades cleaning up the streets of Chicago.
He says he was sent to Cuba as the 'liaison officer for the European Command' & was assigned to the prison's intelligence collection task force.
The detective took charge of the interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, described in official government reports & a best-selling memoir as one of the most brutal ever conducted at the US prison.
Slahi was seen as a priority interrogation target upon arriving at the wartime jail in August 2002.
He was a veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, & US officials suspected he would have information on al-Qaida’s recruitment of the 9/11 hijackers in Europe.
Stuart Couch, a former Marine lieutenant colonel & military commissions prosecutor, described Slahi's treatment as 'unconscionable'. He said: 'I've never seen anyone stoop to those levels,' Stuart Couch, ... said according to the Guardian.
'It's unconscionable, from a perspective of a criminal prosecution – or an interrogation, for that matter.'
Mark Fallon, deputy commander of the now-shuttered Criminal Investigative Task Force at Guantánamo, called Zuley’s interrogation of Slahi 'illegal, immoral & ineffective'.
While his methods at Guantanamo soon came to light, his shameful tactics, honed over years behind closed doors in Chicago police stations, have not received the same public scrutiny.
Several people in Illinois say they were wrongly convicted of crimes following coerced confessions extracted by Zuley & his teams.
An investigation into his methods & conviction records was launched following the 2013 state-attorney's decision to free an innocent man Zuley had helped send to prison for 23 years.
Lathieral Boyd, who was convicted of murder in 1990, has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against him after spending half his life in prison.
On Tuesday, papers filed in federal court showed that the conviction-integrity unit of the Cook County state's attorney now wants to look at civilian complaints against Zuley relating to another wrongful-conviction case.
Another case highlighted by the Guardian includes that of Benita Johnson & Andre Griggs.
Griggs was a heroin addict & petty criminal who was accused of murder in 1994 after an informant claimed he boasted about it.
Griggs says he was handcuffed to a station wall for 'maybe 30 hours' - an ordeal he claims led him to sign a false confession.
Benita Johnson says she was also handcuffed to a precinct wall & implicated herself & former boyfriend Griggs after Zuley & his colleagues threatened to take away her children & seek the death penalty.
Describing her interrogation, Johnson said: 'Basically they just tortured me, mentally, & somewhat physically, with the cuffs, & screamed & hollered. I went through a lot.'
Zuley received praise from Chicago mayor Richard Daley for his successful interrogation of the 2 suspects.
Richard Zuley is accused of shackling suspects to police precinct walls for hours on end, threatening to harm their families & pressurizing them into implicating themselves & others.
Apparently targeting minority Americans, the detective's brutal regime resulted in at least 1 wrongful conviction - & other cases being thrown into doubt following accusations of abuse.
The shocking details, uncovered in an investigation by the Guardian, further damage the reputation of a country still reeling from recent revelations of wartime torture by the CIA.
Zuley was a detective on Chicago's north side from 1977 to 2007 & allegedly spent years engaging in brutal interrogation tactics, which are said to have included threatening subjects with the death penalty if they failed to cooperate.
He was also accused of planting evidence in one high-profile murder case where there was pressure to gain a speedy conviction.
As a Navy reserve lieutenant, he also carried out work for the military, telling a Chicago court in the mid 1990s that he did counter-terrorism work for Naval intelligence while continuing his role as a detective.
He was recruited to the Guantanamo Bay operation in 2002 - with U.S. military commanders believing he was just the man they had been searching for - having spent 3 decades cleaning up the streets of Chicago.
He says he was sent to Cuba as the 'liaison officer for the European Command' & was assigned to the prison's intelligence collection task force.
The detective took charge of the interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, described in official government reports & a best-selling memoir as one of the most brutal ever conducted at the US prison.
Slahi was seen as a priority interrogation target upon arriving at the wartime jail in August 2002.
He was a veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, & US officials suspected he would have information on al-Qaida’s recruitment of the 9/11 hijackers in Europe.
Stuart Couch, a former Marine lieutenant colonel & military commissions prosecutor, described Slahi's treatment as 'unconscionable'. He said: 'I've never seen anyone stoop to those levels,' Stuart Couch, ... said according to the Guardian.
'It's unconscionable, from a perspective of a criminal prosecution – or an interrogation, for that matter.'
Mark Fallon, deputy commander of the now-shuttered Criminal Investigative Task Force at Guantánamo, called Zuley’s interrogation of Slahi 'illegal, immoral & ineffective'.
While his methods at Guantanamo soon came to light, his shameful tactics, honed over years behind closed doors in Chicago police stations, have not received the same public scrutiny.
Several people in Illinois say they were wrongly convicted of crimes following coerced confessions extracted by Zuley & his teams.
An investigation into his methods & conviction records was launched following the 2013 state-attorney's decision to free an innocent man Zuley had helped send to prison for 23 years.
Lathieral Boyd, who was convicted of murder in 1990, has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against him after spending half his life in prison.
On Tuesday, papers filed in federal court showed that the conviction-integrity unit of the Cook County state's attorney now wants to look at civilian complaints against Zuley relating to another wrongful-conviction case.
Another case highlighted by the Guardian includes that of Benita Johnson & Andre Griggs.
Griggs was a heroin addict & petty criminal who was accused of murder in 1994 after an informant claimed he boasted about it.
Griggs says he was handcuffed to a station wall for 'maybe 30 hours' - an ordeal he claims led him to sign a false confession.
Benita Johnson says she was also handcuffed to a precinct wall & implicated herself & former boyfriend Griggs after Zuley & his colleagues threatened to take away her children & seek the death penalty.
Describing her interrogation, Johnson said: 'Basically they just tortured me, mentally, & somewhat physically, with the cuffs, & screamed & hollered. I went through a lot.'
Zuley received praise from Chicago mayor Richard Daley for his successful interrogation of the 2 suspects.
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