By Alicia Powe, GTP, December 1, 2022:

J6 political prisoner Jonathan Mellis warns he and other J6 defendants in the “Patriot Pod” of the DC Gulag are being tortured by “racist, hateful, and abusive correctional officers,” sexually assaulted and treated like animals for being Trump supporters.

Mellis described the abuse in a letter to The Gateway Pundit and is pleading for help from the American people.

“The treatment I have endured since my arrest has shaken my faith in humanity,” wrote the 34,-year-old who was apprehended nearly two years ago in a pre-dawn FBI raid while visiting his parents at their home.

“I was arrested on February 16, 2021, as if I were an Al Qaeda terrorist. I have not seen my family’s faces in almost 2 years. My father, Gennaro Mellis, died a few months after my arrest. I was denied bond back then and still today,” he continued “I hope you can forgive me for reaching out for assistance. I am struggling.”

The last time Mellis saw his father, he was being hauled away by FBI agents in a pre-dawn raid.

“My father was a decorated Vietnam War hero. He was a retired US Army Major, and also retired from the Navy. The last time I ever saw my father I was in handcuffs in front of his house surrounded by dozens of militarized FBI agents. My father was my best friend. My father knew my character and stood by me until his death on May 17, 2021,” he explained. “Unfortunately, my widowed mother is being forced by circumstance to sell the home our family grew up in. It looks like I will never get to see the inside of the home my father raised me in.”

Mellis has spent a year in solitary confinement and 35 days in “the hole,” a “worst version of solitary confinement with chains.”

“The DC Gulag is a special kind of hell,” wrote Mellis, who resided in Williamsburg, Virginia prior to his arrest. “We J6ers have been housed in our own unit together called the Patriot Pod. “

“There have been many instances where one or several of our brothers have been beaten, maced, or even sexually assaulted by our jailers. One of us was zip-tied in the middle of the night in his cell and severely beaten,” the letter states. “One of us was maced for not wearing his mask. One of us was sexually assaulted while he was strip-searched on his way back from his lawyer.

“For nearly a year of my incarceration, I have been subjected to solitary confinement. This means 23 hours or 22 hours every day in my cell. I got 1 or 2 hours a day outside of my cell to shower and make a phone call. I was taken out of this pod randomly one day and placed in the hole, which is a worse version of solitary confinement with chains, for 35 days with no due process or explanation.”

In Dec. 2021, a US Marshals Service conducted an inspection of the DC jail and Patriot Pod and found “systemic failures” including jail employees withholding food and water from inmates as punishment and turning off the water in their cells.

“Human waste and raw sewage overflowed in toilets and there was rampant drug use, according to the inspection,” NBC Washington reports.

According to the Marshal’s statement inspection determined the conditions of the main jail facility conditions “do not meet the minimum standards of confinement as prescribed by the Federal Performance-Based Detention Standards.” As a result, approximately 400 inmates in federal custody were transferred from the DC jail to federal prison.

“The DC Gulag is a nasty building unfit for human habitation,” Mellis wrote. “It is infested with black mold, rats, and toilets that do not flush. The drinking water from the sinks is frequently brown and stinks like rotten eggs. We are not given proper cleaning chemicals and this is how we live. We rely on ourselves to keep our spirits up because we do not have access to visitation or even video visits.”

Correctional officers retaliated against the J6 defendants for complaining about the filthy conditions after the failed inspection by spiking their food cleaning products, Mellis claims. 

“Our entire pod’s food has even been poisoned with cleaning chemicals after court rulings against this jail because of how we are treated or when our complaints resulted in the US Marshalls inspecting this jail,” he explained. “This jail failed the inspection resulting in hundreds of Federal inmates being transferred out of here. This jail lost a lot of money because of this. Simply put, this jail hurts us and hates us.”

On January 6, four people were killed by police officers including Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt.  The officer who killed Babbitt, Lt. Michael Byrd, was exonerated from criminal charges and provided special housing by the federal government.

[….]

Democrats and the anti-Trump entire corporate press demonize the men and women who protested the fraud-ridden 2020 presidential election as “insurrectionists” who arbitrated an attack comparable to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The Department of Homeland Security warns Americans who claim  the election was fraudulent and the believe that Trump can be reinstated pose a national security threat.

But most of the J6 political prisoners, a majority of who are veterans, are “good men” and “just family men,” Mellis said in a phone call from jail.

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