Who is Anna Belen Montes? Part 2.

By Kathleen Malley-Morrison and Guest Author Sean Joseph Clancy

In our last post, we introduced the case of Anna Belen Montes, asking whether she should be considered a spy or a whistle blower because of passing information to the Cuban government concerning U.S. plans she considered dangerous to Cuba.

Ana is presently detained in a psychiatric ward in the Carswell Federal Medical Center, inside the military installations of the U.S. Marines Air Station at Fort Worth. This “medical center” has been called the “hospital of horrors” by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas. Being sent there, the ACLUTX tells us, can be a death sentence for the women housed there.

Today, Sean Joseph Clancy tells us how Ana has been treated since her conviction for spying for the Cuban government.

At Carswell, Ana is locked up with some of the most dangerous women in the U.S. prison system—e.g., a former housewife who strangled her pregnant neighbor because she wanted the child, a nurse who murdered four patients by injecting them with massive adrenaline overdoses, and the notorious “Shrill” Lynette Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford.

Among the harsh and cruel conditions of detention imposed on Ana:

*Contact restrictions to only her closest relatives

*A prohibition on inquiries about her health or the reasons for her detention in a center for the mentally ill, when she suffers no such condition.

*Prohibitions on receiving packages, associating with other inmates, making or receiving phone calls, reading newspapers and magazines, and watching TV.

Detainees at Carswell have suffered gross violations of their human and constitutional rights, including documented cases of police abuse, suspicious deaths, deaths due to the denial of basic medical attention, rape by guards, and exposure to toxic substances. 

To me, her treatment is reminiscent of the use of psychiatric hospitals in the Soviet Union, where political prisoners were isolated from the rest of society, discredited for their ideas, and broken down physically and mentally.  Are we really comfortable letting such treatment happen in the United States in 2016?