Vol. 78/No. 16      April 28, 2014

Lt. Jon Burge, head of police Area 2 headquarters on the South Side until 1993, was convicted in 2010 on federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges for lying during a civil lawsuit about torturing suspects by him and his subordinates throughout the 1970s and ’80s. He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

The demonstration was called by Chicago Torture Justice Memorials and Amnesty International USA. It coincided with Amnesty’s Annual General Meeting. Conference attendees made up about half the action. Participants held up more than 118 black banners, each inscribed with the name of a victim of Chicago police torture.

“We’re here today because of the importance of the issue of torture internationally,” said Adithe Kumar, a 24-year-old student at Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.

“It’s important for the city of Chicago to publicly acknowledge that torture was practiced by police here, that this was fundamentally a human rights abuse, and to apologize for it,” said Rachel Hudak, a member of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials and a worker at DePaul University. “We have to look at this as a movement, not a moment.”

Among those speaking at the rally were Flint Taylor and Joey Mogul, two of the three lead attorneys in the class-action petition filed in October 2012 seeking new trials for all still-incarcerated torture victims.

Cook County Criminal Court Chief Judge Paul Biebel March 12 denied the petitioners’ request that all Burge torture victims file suit together as a class. Biebel appointed David Yellen, dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law, to identify all known Burge torture victims and said he would assign attorneys to work with each to file individual petitions.

“To see so many people turn out to support the torture victims brought tears to my eyes,” said Jeanette Plummer, mother of one of the petitioners, Johnnie Plummer. “It’s very important that we had this good a turnout. We have to keep fighting to win new hearings for those that have not had them and to win some sort of compensation for those who have been released. Many of them have no family for support.”

“This was a really important demonstration of support for the torture victims,” said Anabel Perez, mother of police torture survivor Jaime Hauad.

Last May the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission found Hauad’s claim of torture, along with the claims of six others, credible, and referred the cases for judicial review. But in September the decision on Hauad and two others were rescinded and commission Executive Director David Thomas resigned, amid complaints that the commission didn’t properly inform victims of the body’s recommendations or offer them a chance to testify.

Hauad’s case is scheduled to be reconsidered in May.

“My son has spent another year in prison for a crime he did not commit because of a procedural dispute,” Perez said. “We need to show this kind of support at the commission’s meeting in May.”
 
 
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