Mark Hamilton, the managing director of security personnel for the G4S security company. (photo: Matt Dunham/AP)
The
Shady History of the Private Security Firm Omar Mateen Worked For
By Aviva Shen, ThinkProgress
14 June 16
Omar
Mateen’s employer, private security behemoth G4S, is taking a nosedive in the stock market after
the 29-year-old suspect went on the deadliest shooting rampage in recent
history, killing at least 49 and injuring 53 others in a gay nightclub in
Orlando, Florida.
G4S is
currently being thrust into the spotlight because it employed Mateen, but the
firm’s murky reputation precedes it. Staffers have been caught beating and abusing detained immigrants, keeping children in
solitary confinement, and torturing inmates all
over the world.
But
one particularly dark stain on the company’s record is its brief dalliance with
the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, known for its use of torture and
suspension of due process. And the horror stories out of Guantánamo have provided ideal fodder for
the type of jihadist media and propaganda that may have spurred Mateen to open
fire in the Orlando club.
Al-Qaeda’s
English language recruitment magazine has run features on the torture regimes
at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, declaring that the prisons “exposed the West for
what it really is.” The Taliban’s media seized on the Guantánamo inmates’
hunger strike and urged human rights groups to call more attention to their
plight. In publications and execution videos, ISISrepeatedly references Guantánamo
and mocks President Obama for his inability to make good on his campaign
promise to close the prison.
In the
wake of the inmate hunger strike, G4S secured a contract to
take over operations of the notorious prison for $117 million. The human rights
organization Reprieve raised the alarm at the time that G4S may be
participating in the prison’s abysmal treatment of inmates.
Reprieve’s
formal complaint to Scotland Yard warned that it would be very difficult for
G4S to avoid violating the captives’ rights. Running operations meant “the
company would be involved (either directly or indirectly) with FCE [forcible
cell extraction], force-feeding, and other unlawful and inhumane practices by
the US military,” the report said. “Even temperature regulation at Guantánamo
has been used as a way to torment detainees, therefore the potential extent of
G4S GS’ effect on the detainees should be scrutinised carefully.”
Soon
after the complaint was filed, G4S sold off the U.S. subsidiary that
ran operations in Guantánamo. “We take our responsibilities on human rights
very seriously. We announced our decision to sell G4S Government Solutions in
March 2013 and stated at the time that a significant part of the rationale was
due to our inability to have control or influence over the business as a non-US
parent,” the company said at the time.
G4S got about $126 million from
an undisclosed buyer to take the subsidiary off the firm’s hands.
G4S
has also been criticized for its involvement with Israeli prisons in the West
Bank, another major propaganda tool among extremists. Both al-Qaeda and ISIS
have warred with Palestinian groups Hamas and Hezbollah, yet feature the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict prominently in their rhetoric. While much of terrorist
groups’ depictions of Jews and Israel rely on anti-Semitic myths, they have
still exploited poor
treatment of Palestinians as a way to position themselves as the sole refuge
for Muslims from Western imperialism. Human rights groups reported that prisons
supplied with G4S security systems were abusing children. The company ended its
contract earlier this year under mounting pressure from the Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions campaign (BDS).
We
don’t yet know what motivated Mateen to commit the massacre and dedicate it to
the Islamic State (ISIS). His father, ex-wife, and coworkers have all suggested
he did not seem particularly religious. FBI Director James Comey said that
Mateen had made several calls affiliating himself with conflicting terrorist
groups, but there’s no evidence he was being directed by any of them.
ISIS
relies on social media to recruit people like Mateen, who may not have been
directly coordinating with ISIS but was reportedly inspired by propaganda he read online to commit
atrocities in the group’s name.
G4S
has a whole other slew of scandals in Florida, where Mateen worked for the
firm. The company runs 29 juvenile facilities in the state. A grand jury report
on one such prison said it“ should cease to exist” because
the conditions children were living in were so inhumane.
G4S-run
prisons are rife with violence and have faced multiple riots. Teenagers
live in filthy, dilapidated buildings staffed by undertrained skeleton staffs.
Some G4S employees have even been charged with sexual battery and sexual abuse. The grand
jury report called the company’s operations “a disgrace to the state of
Florida.”
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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