Marty Gottesfeld, 37, is an American political prisoner.
There's just no other way to describe the self-taught, nonviolent
techie/medical freedom activist now locked away in solitary confinement
at a secret federal detention facility in Marion, Illinois — after being
transferred this month from a different secret center in Terre Haute,
Indiana. Both are known as "communications management units" (CMUs) in
prison industrial complex bureaucrat-ese.
Or you could just call them un-American penitentiary black holes.
Twice — last June and this week — I've asked the federal Bureau of
Prisons to explain why Marty is being held in solitary confinement, how
long he has been squirreled away and on what grounds he was transferred.
"For privacy, safety, and security reasons," I was told, "the BOP does
not discuss any individual inmate's conditions of confinement to include
housing quarters or reasons for transfer." This past Sunday marked four
full months that Marty has been in solitary and blocked from
communicating with loved ones or the media.
I first learned of Marty's plight — and his heroism — five years ago
from his loyal and vigilant wife, Dana, whose words in defense of the
dissident action he took that earned him a 10-year federal sentence have
never left me:
"It was the right thing to do."
A quick recap for those who have never heard of, or have forgotten,
the "Free Marty G" nightmare. In 2013, a young girl named Justina
Pelletier was ripped from her parents' custody by Boston Children's
Hospital. The teen, who has mitochondrial disease and postural
orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, had gone to BCH after coming down with
a severe case of the flu. Instead of receiving top-notch care and
attention at BCH, however, Justina was medically kidnapped and
recklessly re-diagnosed with a psychological condition, "somatoform
disorder."
Justina was dragged from BCH's neurology department to its infamous
psych ward, where she was reprimanded for being unable to move her
bowels or walk unassisted in her weakened state. At the Wayside Youth
and Family Support Network residential treatment center where she was
confined, she and her family recounted to me in my 2018 documentary on
the case, she was harassed by a staffer while taking a shower. The
physical and mental torture lasted 16 months.
Enter Marty G.
In April 2014, he helped lead a social media army that implemented
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Boston Children's
Hospital and the nearby Wayside Youth and Family Support Network
residential treatment. Marty had organized a social media army to knock
the computer networks of both institutions offline to protest
Pelletier's medical kidnapping. Hackers from the loose-knit collective,
Anonymous, allegedly participated in the campaign.
Marty was charged and convicted of cybercrimes and sentenced to 10
years in federal prison. He had already spent more than a year behind
bars without bail at the time of his sentencing (including about 80 days
in solitary confinement and a stint in the same detention center as
Mexico's notorious drug cartel kingpin "El Chapo"). He has no regrets
about stepping up in Pelletier's defense and continued his
whistle-blowing investigative journalism after his imprisonment with
Dana's help — until the feds tried to shut him up and shut him down
after reporting on the plight of other CMU inmates.
The last time Dana spoke to Marty was last September. The last time
she was able to see him in person was at his sentencing three years ago —
yes, years — this month. Last summer, BOP officials had recommended
that Marty be removed from the Terre Haute CMU. Instead, he was hauled
from one American Gitmo to another.
"We were devastated to find out that the placement of Marty in the
CMU will continue," Dana told me this week. "There was never any good —
or even comprehensible — reason to place him in that ultra-restrictive
unit that was created in the 9/11 era. The BOP's decision to continue
placing Marty in the CMU shows that the pattern of harassment and
retaliation that Marty faced when he began speaking publicly about
conditions in BOP facilities continues."
Dana added that "less than two-tenths of 1% of federal inmates are
held in the CMUs. Many of them are members of radical Islamist terror
organizations. The BOP has never given a reasonable explanation for why
it has chosen to hold Marty, a nonviolent person never previously
convicted of a crime, in these specialized prison units. I believe the
BOP is continuing to retaliate against Marty for his decision to speak
publicly about conditions in BOP facilities, ranging from damp and
freezing cells, nonpotable water, to misconduct by a BOP unit manager."
The Justice Department's inspector general passed the buck on Marty's
case to the BOP Office of Internal Affairs. Marty's complaint has
fallen into yet another black hole.
If you're outraged that this is happening in America and want to
help, visit https://www.freemartyg.com/ for more information. Fighting
human rights abuses starts here at home, inside our borders, for our
fellow citizens.