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CIA Station Chief Accused Of Multiple Rapes
This from ABC News:
The CIA’s station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
Officials say the 41-year old CIA officer, a convert to Islam, was ordered home by the U.S. Ambassador, David Pearce, in October after the women came forward with their rape allegations in September.
Cue the “America is evil”, “America is the real terrorist”, “America is raping Islam” stories. Let the America bashing commence.
-Chris Jones
Wrongfully Convicted Texas Man Freed After 26 Years
Three times during his nearly 27 years in prison, Charles Chatman went before a parole board and refused to admit he was a rapist. His steadfastness was vindicated Thursday, when a judge released him because of new DNA evidence showing he indeed wasn’t. The release of Chatman, 47, added to Dallas County’s nationally unmatched number of wrongfully convicted inmates.
“Every time I’d go to parole, they’d want a description of the crime or my version of the crime,” Chatman said. “I don’t have a version of the crime. I never committed the crime. I never will admit to doing this crime that I know I didn’t do.”
Chatman became the 15th inmate from Dallas County since 2001 to be freed by DNA testing. He served more time than any of the other inmates, four of whom were in court Thursday to show their support.
Dallas has freed more inmates after DNA testing than any other county nationwide, said Natalie Roetzel of the Innocence Project of Texas. Texas leads the country in prisoners freed by DNA testing, releasing at least 30 wrongfully convicted inmates since 2001, according to the Innocence Project.
Chatman was 20 when the victim, a young woman in her 20s, picked him from a lineup. Chatman said he lived five houses down from the victim for 13 years but never knew her.
She identified him in court as the attacker, and serology tests showed that the type of blood found at the crime scene matched that of Chatman—along with 40 percent of other black males.
Chatman said he was working at the time of the assault, an alibi supported by his sister, who was also his employer. Nevertheless, Chatman was convicted of aggravated sexual assault in 1981 and sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Mr. Chatman must be an incredibly strong person psychologically, and emotionally because I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like to be sent to prison for something you didn’t do.
The man has been incarcerated for more than 26 years!! How do you even begin to right a wrong of that magnitude? More than two decades were stolen from Mr. Chatman that he can never get back.
I think for starters he should get around $2 million dollars for every year he was in prison, which would give him a nice settlement of around $52 million dollars.
Money won’t even begin to make up for losing so many years, but at least he can spend the next 26 years living the good life and spending time with his family.
It’s so important that we revisit old cases where DNA testing is now possible to determine with absolute certainty that an innocent person is not rotting in prison.
-Chris Jones
Texas Woman: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
Now this lawsuit actually sounds like it has some legs, because the State Department actually intervened and rescued her from the shipping container!
“It felt like prison,” says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming “20/20″ investigation. “I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened.”
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
“I said, ‘Dad, I’ve been raped. I don’t know what to do. I’m in this container, and I’m not able to leave,’” she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
“We contacted the State Department first,” Poe told ABCNews.com, “and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen” — from her American employer.
Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones’ camp, where they rescued her from the container.
According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by “several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally.”
Army doctors performed a rape kit on Ms. Jones which clearly showed that she had been raped both vaginally and anally. However, the rape kit mysteriously disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.
Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. Legal experts say Jones’ alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.
I have been a strident defender of allowing contractors to be immune from prosecution in Iraq. I don’t really lose any sleep over Blackwater having to shoot one or more people for whatever reason.
Immunity for “contractor on Iraqi” crime is one thing, but I never considered that immunity would extend to “contractor on contractor” crimes. Or more specifically “American on American” crimes. Shooting an Iraqi in a war zone is one thing, but American contractors gang-raping a 20-year old American woman is f*cking outrageous.
Jones went on to say that KBR and Halliburton created a “boys will be boys” atmosphere in the barracks, which created an unsafe environment for females. The fact that KBR/Halliburton would even consider making the women share the same barracks with a bunch of “alpha male” contractors is almost too much to believe. If they chose to bunk with the guys so be it, but their should have been separate quarters available.
The honest to god truth is that regardless of sleeping quarters, American contractors should act like professionals rather than a bunch of rabid animals. It’s this kind of crap that brings dishonor and shame to everyone who’s over there trying to do good work.
There is absolutely no legitimate reason for extending immunity for crimes against co-workers. I guess that means that a contractor could shoot a U.S. Soldier and be immune, or kill a Congressman and be immune. This is getting to be a sick situation and if a little bit of immunity is gonna become this kind of immunity, then clearly there should be NO immunity.
This entire story will be featured on an upcoming episode of “20/20.”
-Chris Jones
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