A savage prison beating in an Idaho correctional facility has been caught on tape, showing a young inmate brutally attacked by another prisoner while surrounding guards look on and do not intervene.
In the security footage obtained by The Associated Press, Idaho Correctional Center inmate Hanni Elabed, 24, can be seen being thrown to the ground and brutally beaten and kicked by fellow inmate James Haver for roughly two minutes.
At one point, Haver even takes a break before resuming the attack.
Though Elabed tried to alert the guards to help him, he was ignored until Haver chose to stop beating him, at which point the room was opened and Haver handcuffed.
Medical personnel arrived to examine Elabed, who can be seen in the footage lying motionless on the floor after the attack.
He sustained internal bleeding in his skull and spent three days in a coma, waking up to permanent brain damage and short-term memory loss.
The assault came as no surprise to other inmates who have been in the facility.
They refer to it as the "gladiator school" because of the violent atmosphere, the AP reported.
In lawsuits filed against the prison, inmates accuse the facility of exploiting inmate-on-inmate violence to force prisoners to inform on each other, out of fear that if they don't they will be placed in more dangerous situations.
Prior to being attacked, Elabed claims in his lawsuit, he gave prison officials information that he had seen drug trafficking take place between inmates and staffers, and that he had been threatened by fellow prisoners.
He was placed in solitary confinement so he would not be attacked, but shortly thereafter was returned to a cell with the same prisoners he had just "snitched" on.
He was there for only six minutes before Haver assaulted him.
"This isn't even what we know of as a prison - this is a gulag," Steven Pavar, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the AP, which released the video after verifying its authenticity.
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| Elabed was in a coma for 3 days |
Corrections Corporation of America, the company that owns the prison, bashed the AP's decision to post the footage.
"Public release of the video poses an unnecessary security risk to our staff, the inmates entrusted to our care, and ultimately to the public," CCA said in a statement.
The AP reports that a CCA spokesman did condemn the attack, but refused to answer further questions.
Elabed, serving a robbery sentence, was ultimately released from prison early on medical parole because his injuries were too severe to be treated adequately in prison.
"It's almost like Hanni's autistic after this," his brother Zahe Elabed told the AP. "I feel like I'm talking to someone who's 12 or 13 years old."
Idaho Department of Correction officials say they have increased security and oversight over prison officials, but for inmates like Elabed, it is too little, too late.
"[The guards] were spectators," said Elabed's attorney, Ben Schwartzman. "That seems to indicate a level of callousness that I find shocking...It's an embarrassment to the institution and to the individuals."