prisoner abuse at Vanguard Group federal jail
A Texas judge has set an arraignment date for Friday (11/21) for Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. They were indicted this week by a Texas grand jury on state charges accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a privately-run federal jail. Cheney, Gonzales and the others named in the indictments will not be arrested, and do not need to appear in person at the arraignment, the judge said.
Half of the eight high-profile indictments returned Monday by a Willacy County grand jury are tied to privately-run federal detention centers in the sparsely populated South Texas county and the other half target judges and special prosecutors who played a role in an earlier investigation of Guerra.
The grand jury traced a sketchy line between Cheney's influence over the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency, which oversees the county's federal immigrant detention center, and his substantial holdings in the Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies. Combining those interests, the grand jury accused Cheney of a conflict of interest because the more the prison companies were paid to hold inmates, the better he did financially. "It is appalling to find that numerous elected officials from different levels of our government throughout our country to our U.S. Vice President Richard B. Cheney, defendant, are profiting from depriving human beings of their liberty," the indictment said.
