Prisoners

Charred cotton mattress stuffing is heaped on a scruffy lawn outside Joshua Hall dormitory at the California Institution for Men, the interior ankle-deep in ash and evidence of inmate-on-inmate brutality that has destroyed precious space in one of the state's most volatile prisons. In neighboring Otay Hall, dried blood stains a lower bunk mattress where a reclining inmate's chest would be, two deep gashes in the fabric suggesting a stab wound. Between the two dorms -- one destroyed by fire, the other smashed and debris-strewn -- stands an empty carton marked "White Kittey," testifying to the racial divides that run deep among the facility's 5,900 prisoners.

A Cal State Northridge graduate student who was briefly imprisoned in Iran while working on her master's thesis on women's rights and then prohibited from leaving the country for nine months returned this week to Los Angeles, school officials said Thursday. Esha Momeni, 29, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday and was greeted by friends and family. "It is wonderful news," Cal State Northridge President Jolene Koester said in a prepared statement. "All of us in the CSU Northridge community have been looking forward to this day. I have met briefly with Esha, and she appears to be in fine spirits."

Advocates for battered women are urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to release a terminally ill prison inmate who is serving a life sentence for her role in the 1982 murder of her abusive boyfriend at a secluded park near Lawndale. A state parole board decided last month that Deborah Peagler should be released after spending more than 25 years in prison for luring the victim to Alondra Park, where two men beat and strangled him with an electrical cord. The governor has until Aug. 21 to decide whether to reverse the parole board's decision.

Immigrants detained for more than six months without a bond hearing can sue the federal government in a class action aimed at getting a court to recognize their right to a swifter appearance before a judge, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. In a case brought by civil rights groups, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court decision denying the group class status for their lawsuit. "This is a huge victory for immigrants who have been held in prolonged, indefinite detention without the most basic element of due process: a hearing to determine if their detention is justified," said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of immigrants' rights and national security for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

The U.S. military has agreed for the first time to provide information to the International Committee of the Red Cross about prisoners held in secret detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it will continue to deny the organization access to them, military officials said Saturday. The facilities are "short-term places" operated by U.S. Special Forces for newly captured suspected insurgents considered to have valuable information or to be serious threats, according to an official familiar with the subject who was not authorized to discuss it on the record.

The Obama administration Monday set the country on a course to confront whether actions taken in the name of defending Americans instead crossed criminal lines. In simultaneous moves, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. opened an investigation into whether CIA interrogators broke the law and the administration complied with a judge's order and released a long-secret CIA report that cataloged allegations of agency prisoner abuse. The administration also released memos sought in recent months by former Vice President Dick Cheney that he argued attest to the success of the CIA's controversial methods, but that appeared inconclusive in part because the agency had blacked out large portions of the memos.

All inmates booked into jails throughout Los Angeles County will have their immigration status checked beginning today, but federal officials said they don't have the resources to deport all illegal immigrants with criminal records who are identified. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will prioritize illegal immigrants with prior convictions for violent crimes, including murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery. Though immigration officials plan to assess every case individually, they said some with less serious criminal records may be released back into the community.

Their transformations took place in a sensory cocoon: aboard a CIA aircraft, shackled in place, deprived of sight and sound by blindfolds, headsets and hoods. They emerged into an existence that was hidden for most of the last eight years, but now is possible to glimpse through dozens of declassified files released by the Obama administration last week. Scattered throughout, in the CIA's clinical style, are descriptions of the prisoners' surroundings, the extraordinary security measures with which they were handled, the often brutal search for answers they were thought to possess, and what passed for everyday life.

Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to Obama administration officials. The new system will be applied to the approximately 600 Afghans being held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Obama inherited from the Bush administration.

Alberto Rodriguez is either a patriot or a terrorist, depending on whom you ask. Imprisoned 16 years for his membership in a radical Puerto Rican coalition that was tied to a series of bombings, he now is a full-time father, taking one of his children to school for the first time. "I don't regret anything. I can't even imagine me, who I am, without those experiences," said Rodriguez, 56. "But I did miss a lot because of the choices I made." Ten years ago this month, 11 members of the groups known collectively as the FALN, which advocated for Puerto Rican independence by terrorizing New York and Chicago, were freed under a controversial clemency deal offered by President Clinton.