Police Slaying Of Unarmed Mom Goes Global

Even brutal, repressive regime sees rights violation

WND

GARTH KANT

WASHINGTON – While most Americans still would not recognize the name Miriam Carey, the unarmed black mother gunned down by police in the streets of the nation’s capital after apparently making a wrong turn near the White House, the case is getting international attention.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has cited the incident, now the subject of a $75 million lawsuit by Carey’s family, as an example of human-rights abuses taking place in the United States.

The report by the Basij paramilitary organization says the United States is “one of the main violators of human rights” in the world, something with which many Americans would not agree.

However, the Iranian media are doing something the Western media are not: Calling attention to a potentially serious human-rights violation, right on the doorstep of the U.S. Capitol.

The Iranian report cites a litany of familiar accusations of human-rights violations, frequently made by such groups as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, that the mainstream media dutifully report:

• Accusations of torture at the Guantanamo Bay prison;

• Accusations of torture by solitary confinement in U.S. prisons;

• NSA spying;

• The Trayvon Martin case;

• And accusations of rampant racial discrimination in American society.

The one exception that the Iranians cite, but the Western media are not reporting, is the ongoing Miriam Carey case.

The attorney for the Carey family, Eric Sanders, commented upon the Iranian report, telling WND, “We are very judgmental in this country. We criticize other countries about their record on human rights yet, our own liberties are trampled upon just as Miriam’s.”

Constitutional law expert John Whitehead, president and founder of the nonprofit civil-liberties organization the Rutherford Institute, agreed, telling WND, “I think they (the Iranians) are absolutely correct.” And, considering the source, Whitehead added, “What an indictment.”

Having chronicled numerous cases of police abuse, Whitehead went even further, claiming, “They (the Iranians) recognize something a lot of Americans don’t – that we live in a police state.”

Whitehead is one of four leading experts in civil liberties and law enforcement that previously spoke to WND about the Carey case. Another one of those, famed journalist Nat Hentoff, had told WND, “[T]his is a classic case of police out of control and, therefore, guilty of plain murder.”

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Reposted with permission