WhatFinger


For years, Michael Fumento has been the source of some of the hardest-hitting reporting around, speaking truth to power in an era in which bovine gullibility has become the main or even the sole virtue

Canada Free Press columnist Michael Fumento freed from Colombia jail, but his troubles are not over



Stock Photo of Colombian Jail Canada Free Press columnist Michael Fumento has finally been freed from the Colombian jail where he was incarcerated for more than six weeks on absurdly trumped-up charges – but his troubles are not over. Michael Fumento is the author of The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS and The Fat of the Land. More recently, he has been embedded with US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of his combat video recordings have been aired on the History Channel.
Michael’s problems began Easter Sunday 1 April when he was attacked on the street by a knife-wielding assailant. The police were summoned, and they ignored the attacker and arrested Michael and took him to the Bucaramanga jail, where he found himself accused of throwing a firebomb at a man’s house. Although the alleged bomber was described by witnesses only as “a man wearing blue jeans,” Michael found himself charged with arson and attempted murder. “Worse than you can imagine,” Michael describes the Bucaramanga jail, with 800 prisoners packed into a space built to hold no more than 240. “The floor was completely covered with people.” “There were people sleeping in stairwells. You could see people in hammocks. So when you had to go to the bathroom at night you were constantly stepping over people even as you were stepping under people.” Because the government had ceded the inside of the prison to the para-military, one of the world’s largest drug-trafficking cartels, Michael explains, “Everything in the prison was bought and sold. “So the table you sat at in the common area – you had to rent that table. And the chair that you sat at – you had to rent that chair. If you wanted to get your food fast, rather than wait an hour in line, then you paid for that.” For breakfast, prisoners were given a cold hot dog or a slice of baloney on a hot dog bun. For lunch and dinner there was rice, twice a day, every day, along with meat.

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“The meat was pack animal,” Michael recalls. “Burro or mule or horse,” or it was vulture (a common bird in the area) or pigeons trapped in the prison. “I know the food in American prisons isn’t the best in the world either, but it’s a little better than eating Francis the Talking Mule or Mr. Ed.” The prisoner in charge of security, called El Conejo (The Rabbit), had purchased that position from his predecessor. “He had fifty security guys, and all of them were armed with homemade knives. So I walked in the very first night and I see all these guys sharpening knives. Which, as you might guess, is a little bit disconcerting.” In Colombia, Michael notes, authorities can hold a suspect in jail for up to a year before bringing him before a judge – and they often take that entire year to do so. “You had multiple murderers, you had rapists, you had the drug runners, we were all mixed together,” Michael remembers. One prisoner, who worked washing clothes for the others, was given Rohypnol every Thursday to sedate him, and then other prisoners took turns raping him. At the time he was arrested, Michael was taking the the prescription drug clonazepam, a benzodiazepine which was withheld from him for the first two weeks of his confinement. Withdrawal from benzodiazepines can cause seizures, coma, and death. Michael pleaded with prison authorities to allow him his prescribed clonazepam (which he had with him when he was admitted) but they refused.

“I had these terrible convulsions that could have killed me,” Michael recalls. One prison doctor instead administered a shot of penicillin, and another gave him baby aspirin. The prison hospital’s “emergency hours” were from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. “With perhaps 600 extra people,” he said, “They want you to die.” Nor are his troubles over. He says the effort to win his freedom cost him $7500 in legal fees and $6000 in extortion payments to have the charges dropped. Further were the expenses for the privilege of being confined. For years, Michael Fumento has been the source of some of the hardest-hitting reporting around, speaking truth to power in an era in which bovine gullibility has become the main or even the sole virtue. Readers who wish to help Michael can make a contribution to his PayPal account using the email address fumento@gmail.com. (Patrick Hahn and Canada Free Press would like to thank all our readers, who offered their thoughts, prayers and support for Michael Fumento during his incarceration.)


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Patrick D Hahn -- Bio and Archives

Patrick D Hahn is the author of Prescription for Sorrow: Antidepressants, Suicide, and Violence (Samizdat Health Writer’s Cooperative) and Madness and Genetic Determinism: Is Mental Illness in Our Genes? (Palgrave MacMillan). Dr. Hahn is an Affiliate Professor of Biology at Loyola University Maryland.



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