from the NATO 5 support blog
Sabi Senakiewicz. NATO 5 Support photo.
Sebastian “Sabi” Senakiewicz of the NATO 5 has been deported to his native Poland after spending several weeks in immigration detention. Last November, Sabi took a non-cooperating plea deal to charges of falsely making a terrorist threat after being targeted by two undercover Chicago cops who had infiltrated activist groups in Chicago. He ultimately completed a 4-month boot camp sentence to execute his sentence with the understanding that he would be deported afterwards since he does not have U.S. citizenship.
As Sabi and his mother were driving away from his boot camp graduation last month, their car was pulled over and he was taken into ICE custody to begin his deportation proceedings. He was expecting to be on house arrest for about a month prior to deportation.
The NATO 5 were arrested immediately prior to or during the NATO summit in Chicago, May 2012, and charged with various offenses on the testimony of undercover police agents provocateur. Three men still in prison await trial in January, 2014 on Illinois criminal charges including terrorism related offenses.
The fifth defendant, Mark Neiweem, took a plea in April and last month was placed in solitary confinement at the state prison in Pontiac, Illinois on two prison charges. These charges are inherently political, claiming that Mark’s reading, writing, and speaking with others about Anarchism, as well as being in possession of Anarchist symbols, is dangerous to the facility. Although Mark is due to be released in November, if these charges are upheld he faces up to two more years at Pontiac – all of it in solitary confinement.
His legal team is working to defend him against these charges. In the meantime, Mark is in the worst part of the prison with virtually no human contact. He describes his cell as “a tiny box”:
I reach my arms out and touch both walls with room to spare. I don’t know the dimensions but it’s by far the smallest cell I’ve ever been in. The front is steel plates with some holes drilled in them and the tiny view is of a brick wall 8 feet away. No light but the one they leave on nearly 24 hours a day. I’ve got my head rested up against a pillow on one wall and my legs straight out, elevated and kicked up on the other wall. My ‘man cave’ has shrunk to a ‘man hole.’ Please send pictures of people, places, and things. These walls are ugly.
Prison addresses for Mark and the NATO 3 awaiting trial can be found here.