Jan. 6 Rioters Are Asking for a Transfer to … Guantanamo Bay

A cohort of inmates who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot are asking to be transferred from the Washington, D.C., jail to Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, via a letter submitted in court last Friday.

The group of 34 inmates — which includes Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and some who signed the letter alongside the moniker “political prisoner”  — cite poor conditions in the D.C. Central Detention Facility, as well as mistreatment by guards, as their reasons for wanting to serve out the remainder of their imprisonment at Gitmo. The inmates describe being detained in an “evisceration facility” of the “body mind and soul” where alongside the inadequate facilities and hygiene issues characteristic of the American carceral system they are subjected to such tortures as vaccine requirements, critical race theory propaganda, and guards wearing “Kamalla Harris” attire.

The notorious Guantanamo Bay prison was established on a spit of American controlled land in Cuba by President George W. Bush following the 9/11 terror attacks. The prison developed a reputation as a legal no-man’s-land where human rights laws regarding the treatment of detainees could be ignored. Reports of illegal detention, torture, and sexual abuse of inmates led to a slow downscaling of its operations, and only a handful of inmates facing indefinite detention remain housed in the facility.

“We hereby request to spend our precious and limited days, should the government continue to insist on holding us captive unconstitutionally as pre-trial detainees to be transferred and reside at Guantanamo Bay,” the letter from the Jan. 6 defendants read.

The inhumane conditions of the D.C. jail have been previously documented. In Dec. 2021, about half of the inmates were removed from the Central Detendtion Facility following an unannounced inspection by U.S. Marshals that found facilities to be substandard for inhabitation. The Jan. 6 defendants being held at the jail are housed in what they’ve called the “Patriot Wing,” a separate medium-security annex of the prison known as the Central Treatment Facility that cleared the inspection conducted by Marshals. There the inmates awaiting trial sing the “Star Spangled Banner” every afternoon, have access to iPads and The Bachelor, and stage a Sunday variety show.

Signatories to the letter include Dominic Pezzola of the Proud Boys and Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, both of whom have been indicted on charges of seditious conspiracy. Jan. 6 defendants like Pezzola and Watkins who are being held without bond in D.C. represented some of the most severe charges brought against the Capitol rioters. Fellow signatories include Nathan Degrave, Marshall Neefe, and Jeffrey McKellop, who were charged with assaulting law enforcement officers during the Capitol breach. Another inmate who signed the letter Troy Smocks was sentenced to 14 months in jail for social media posts encouraging Jan. 6 protesters to “prepare our weapons” and “hunt these cowards down like the Traitors that each of them are. This includes RINOS, Dems, and Tech Execs. We now have the green light.”

The comparisons between the detainment of Jan. 6 defendants and extrajudicial torture centers have been driven by prominent conservative political figures. Legislators, including representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), visited the prison. Greene likened the conditions to those of a “prisoner of war camp.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson produced a three-part special in which the Jan. 6 defendants were cast as political prisoners being unlawfully detained by the same forces that orchestrated the notorious human rights abuses in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

While some of their grievances are clearly frivolous and the comparison to Guantanamo Bay are outlandish, the inmates’ complaints about the conditions of the facilities have resulted in notable victories for detainees of a prison where administrators that seemed content to ignore health and safety issues until a large cohort of mostly white, well-funded, and well-publicized inmates arrived in their jurisdiction.

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