UPDATE: Email from Sean: “I’m out of the dungeon. Description of shenanigans to follow. I’m broke, so no $ on phone account to call. Thank you for everything. Sorry this is short, but I’m spent. Will write more later. You rock. Freedom, Sean.” Followed by this incomplete text. We don’t know if Sean’s demands have been met, if he’s off hungerstrike, or whether to make any more calls.
Ohio State Penitentiary administrators removed Sean Swain from population, according to a prisoner housed on Sean’s security level. He is now held incommunicado, without phone or email access, and likely without writing materials. When prison officials last removed Sean from population at Mansfield Correctional, he was placed in a torture cell with no heat, no bed, no shower, forced to pace 24 hours a day to stay warm. He left there sleep-deprived and hallucinating. Less than 90 days later, two other prisoners died on Torture Cell Row.
Sean initiated a hungerstrike on Monday, 02 February and refused blood pressure medication beginning Tuesday, 10 February. His health is likely already compromised, so placement in a torture cell, isolated from all other prisoners and cut off from the outside world, could only be initiated by prison officials for the obvious motive of eliminating Sean once and for all.
Sean, anticipating this possibility, explained, “The only thing to gain by isolating me is the opportunity to continue refusing me medications after I have agreed to start taking them again. In other words, isolating me gives them the chance to murder me without witnesses, something they can’t do while I’m in population.”
Prison officials would benefit greatly from the death of Sean Swain. Currently, Sean has a lawsuit filed through his counsel, Richard Kerger. This lawsuit threatens to expose the illegality of ODRC Director Gary Mohr’s JPay policy, that enriches a prison profiteer corporation; it threatens to expose the State’s recourse to torture, and a connection between the FBI and torture engineer Trevor Clark, who was disclosed as “agency liaison” to the FBI; it threatens to expose a not-so-secret dirty war waged by government against dissidents and critics, particularly of an anarchist perspective.
It very well may be that ODRC Director Gary Mohr, his corporate sponsors, and his FBI puppeteers have decided that they are better off with Sean Swain dead than alive.
Sean’s supporters and legal counsel await any kind of communication from Sean, who has previously proven resourceful at smuggling communiques out of the prison, even from the supermax.
Prior to his being “disappeared,” he was asked pointedly about prison officials murdering him to silence him permanently. He said, “Somewhere, some time, some government official decided nobody would care if Mohammed Bouazizi lived or died. Then, 3 governments in the region were swept out of power by the force of popular resistance. Somewhere, some time, some government official decided nothing would happen if Mike Brown died. Then, popular resistance burned down Ferguson.
“I don’t know. Maybe they can get away with killing me, maybe they can’t. But if they think they need to kill a former gas station attendant who had a 2.2 grade-point average in high school in order to defend their fascist program from the truth, they’ve already lost; they’re in far deeper shit than they realize.”
Demand Sean’s immediate release back to general population and reinstatement of all of his communication!
OSP Warden Jay Forshay: 330-743-0700 ext 2006.
Write letters: Warden Forshay, OSP, 878 Coitsville-Hubbard Rd, Youngstown, OH 44505
Email: Laura.Gardner@odrc.state.oh.us
Someone, nobody knows who in the Chief Inspector’s Office: 614-752-1687
770 West Broad Street
Columbus, Ohio 43222