Kris Hermes Spokesman National Lawyers Guild Chicago
Kris Hermes
Interview with Kris Hermes, an official spokesperson and legal worker for
the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, indictments against 'NATO
3' protesters.
Hello. This is John Robles. I am speaking with Kris Hermes, an official
spokesperson and legal worker for the Chicago Chapter of the National
Lawyers Guild, which is defending the NATO 3.
Why were you initially denied the indictments by the prosecutors?
We were told by the state’s attorney that we would not be able to see
indictments until July 2nd, when the defendants will be arraigned.
Is that normal? You are not going to have any time to prepare.
This is a little time to prepare. Typically conversations happen between the
defense attorneys and the state’s attorney for whatever reason. The city has
refused to talk with us about this case and so we found out about the
indictments just by going to the circuit court clerk’s office. They were
apparently made public in the clerk’s office and we happened to be there
reviewing other cases and noticed they were there and we were able to obtain
them. Why they felt that they didn’t want to let us know that the
indictments were public, we are not really sure, why they wouldn’t provide
them when we asked at the last court hearing, we are not really sure.
Very strange. So, what is unusual about the indictments?
There are multiple counts of possession of the incendiary device. In
addition to the three charges, the three original charges, which are
material support for terrorism, possession of incendiary device and
conspiracy to commit terrorism, several other charges were tacked on as a
result of the indictment including attempted arson, solicitation to commit
arson, conspiracy to commit arson and two counts of unlawful use of a
weapon. Essentially each defendant now has 11 charges. There is not
necessarily anything unusual about the indictment other than the fact that
these excessive charges smack of further sensationalism by the state’s
attorney to make this a show trial, to create hysteria around these
sensational charges and we still have not seen any evidence. We’ve not been
given anything other than a proffer, which alleges all sorts of crimes that
they’ve provided us no evidence of.
Can you explain to our listeners what’s a difference between for example a
grand jury indictment and just charges?
Sure. The state’s attorney had the option when the indictment was issued of
putting on evidence and witnesses in a preliminary hearing that is commonly
done in criminal cases. But that would involve the defense attorneys, it
would involve the ability to review evidence and to cross-examine witnesses.
The state’s attorney didn’t want to do that, so the other option was to call
a grand jury in secret without the involvement of the Defense Council and
get an indictment that way, and that’s what they did.
Is that going to help the defense out later in the case?
I think a preliminary hearing would have been more helpful to the defense.
The fact that they issued an indictment in secret doesn’t really help us at
this point and I am not sure it will help us in the future. Everything is
shrouded in secrecy, the state’s attorney is unwilling to divulge any
information so we are pretty hamstrung at the moment in terms of being able
to effectively defend our client.
Would you characterize this as some sort of political prosecution?
It’s definitely a political prosecution: the first words out of the state’s
attorney’s mouth at the bond hearing were that these were anarchists, part
of so-called “Black Block” and their attempt to politicize their crimes is
very evident. There is no evidence that we’ve seen that these people hold
any particular political belief but certainly there is no crime against
having anarchists beliefs or engaging in activism in your community. These
young men should not be put on trial for their political beliefs and if
that’s what the state’s attorney is doing, this case is going to evaporate
quickly.
By putting that staff out in the press before the bond hearing, for example,
are there grounds for dismissing the case entirely?
Certainly, it smacks of politicization and it also indicates that the city
was intent on discrediting not only these activists but the Occupy Chicago
movement or the Occupy Wall Street movement, even greater than that. There
have been other incidents around the country, in which the state has tried
to discredit the Occupy movement, but also these arrests happened in advance
of the NATO protests so they were in a sense trying to discourage folks from
coming out and protesting in the streets.
Do you think that was successful?
I think they did achieve short term objective which was to create hysteria,
spread fear and intimidation and discourage people from coming out to
protest and it’s difficult to say how many people would have come out to
protest if these arrests had not been made and this PR campaign and had not
been sort of put forward by the state’s attorney, but we believe that some
amount of people have been discouraged and that’s a chilling of people’s
First Amendment rights.
Do you think if these charges are successful, that other states will attempt
to charge other Occupy activists with similar charges?
There is depending case in Cleveland, in which infiltrators were involved
and they are trying to also discredit the Occupy Wall Street movement there
by attaching accusations of bomb-making to activists in Cleveland. In each
contemporary example of people being arrested for explosives-related crimes,
they’ve all involved infiltrators, police informants or undercover cops, and
there is real serious question as to whether or not provocation and
entrapment was at the root of it.
Do you see the stripping of civil liberties and rights in the US for
security reasons continuing?
The Pfizer rules from what I understand have just been renewed, which gives
the government the right to tap phone lines without a warrant, without
probable cause and I think they were definitely not moving in the right
direction in terms of maintaining people’s civil liberties. We have a long
way to go to reverse course and return a lot of the rights that we had
pre-9/11 that have been eroded over the years through executive order and
attorney general guidelines.
Do you think that’s going to happen?
I don’t think it’s going to happen without very concerted effort on the part
of civil libertarians and activists that are trying to preserve their
constitutional rights.
Thank you. You were listening to an interview with Kris Hermes, an official spokesperson and legal worker for the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
How US Protestors are Detained and Disappeared Download audio file 30 May 2012, 21:28 Interview with Mr. Kris Hermes, a Spokesperson for the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
My first question is: on what grounds can the U.S. police detain protesters and what are the most common charges? Commonly at these types of summits, which our government designates as national special security events, there is any number of charges that can be applied to people protesting. Whether or not the charges are valid and whether they result in the conviction is another story, but commonly parading without a permit is a charge that is often applied. In Chicago here we saw mostly misdemeanors and ordinance violations that included disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and failure to disperse. Those are fairly common charges, as well. Of course, there were certain activists who were charged with much more serious crimes. In fact there were 4 people charged with terrorism related crimes and a handful of others charged with aggravated battery on police officer.
Can you fill us in a little bit about what you know about those terrorism charges? There is a laundry list of allegations that are being made by the state’s attorneys office but so far we have seen absolutely no evidence of anything. We have not even seen a search warrant or the affidavit of probable cause used to raid the house that they were staying in. What we do know is there appears to be two infiltrators either police informants or under-covered police involved in the case, involved in the operation. We have serious concerns with whether they were set up, whether there was provocation on the part of the infiltrators. We understand that the police allegedly recovered four Molotov cocktails but so far we haven’t seen any evidence of that and we are only going on the accusations of the state’s attorneys office right now.
What percentage of tortures like these are exaggerated or fabricated and what percentage do you think are entrapped? Unfortunately, in our system of law that isn’t always something that we figure out. It’s not necessarily resolved in criminal cases. For example, there was a federal aid informant that was in the operation that supposedly entrapped three young men at the Republican convention in Saint Paul in 2008. They took plea bargains, they did not take their case to trial, so we never got a resolution as to whether there was provocation and what involvement the informant or the infiltrator had over these three people. And quite often because the charges are so serious and the jail time so daunting, people don’t want to take the case to trial and, therefore, we never really find out a complete set of information regarding the role of the infiltrators.
Could you give maybe as a percentage: half the cases, third, two thirds, whether there are innocent people being convicted? I can say, my gut feel of this is that the U.S. government is manufacturing crimes in order to justify a very heavy police apparatus and justify the militarization of police at events like this and to justify the terrorism operations of local and federal law enforcement. And it’s no mistake that the three individuals currently being most seriously charged here in Chicago, are from out of town, and that the infiltrators who prayed on them were here for many weeks before these folks came in from Florida to protest NATO and they were approached as vulnerable targets, they did not know the activist community in Chicago and they were easy targets to be able to manufacture crimes if that’s in fact what happened. We hopefully will get to the bottom of that. We are concerned about the implications using infiltrators to arrest and prosecute them and we hope to find more information how we proceed and we will vigorously defend them in court.
How many people do you know or have you heard about that have been disappeared? The disappeared comment came when we were trying to locate a number of people that has been arrested surreptitiously without any announcement by the police, we tried to track them down for hours unsuccessfully. The police department gave us no information on them. That included the 9 people who were arrested in the house raid in the Bridgeport area of Chicago on Wednesday night prior to the NATO Summit. And there were number of other people that were picked off the street and taken away and we were unable to find them as well. And that was quite distressing to not only our team of lawyers and legal workers but their friends and comrades as well.
I’ve heard and I’ve read cases in the United States since 9/11 of many people (some reports I read about 5000 people) that have disappeared since 9/11 on terrorism-related charges. Under what circumstances could somebody be held by the authorities incommunicado indefinitely? We just passed a law that allows for secret and indefinite detention of even U.S. citizens at home and abroad. At this point the executive powers available to the president and the justice department are very expansive and people ca be held without notification to their family or friends and can be held indefinitely if terrorism crimes are involved.
Have you heard any numbers as a professional? I am sorry, I don’t know. As to this law I was referring to just now, the outrageous authority, the level of executive authority given to the president is done so under the National Defense Authorization Act.
As far as I understand right now, he can order even American citizens killed. Yes, I am sorry, that is actually another provision in the law that they are not able to just indefinitely detain people but also extra-judicially execute them. There is apparently a list that the executive branch possesses that does not have to be disclosed to anybody, so you don’t know who was on this list, how extensive the list is and how they came up with the list. Thank you, sir. I really appreciate you speaking with me.
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