Politics and Money

[arizona1]

I guess the Oakland cops just hate veterans.

Second Iraq War vet hospitalized after Oakland protest

The Guardian reported on Friday that a second Iraq War veteran is in intensive care in an Oakland Hospital, with a lacerated spleen allegedly resulting from a beating by police during the protests on Wednesday night.

This follows the case of Scott Olsen, who was shot in the head with a tear gas projectile during last week’s protests and suffered brain damage for which he remains in the hospital.

Kayvan Sabehgi told the paper that he was walking through central Oakland around midnight on Wednesday, trying to get away from the violent clashes that had broken out, when he came face to face with a line of police officers.

“They told me to move, but I was like: ‘Move to where?’” Sabehgi recalled. “There was nowhere to move. Then they lined up in front of me. I was talking to one of them, saying ‘Why are you doing this?’ when one moved forward and hit me in my arm and legs and back with his baton. Then three or four cops tackled me and arrested me.”

Sabeghi says he was handcuffed and held in a police van for three hours, and that by the time he reached the jail he was in “unbelievable pain.”

“My stomach was really hurting,” he says, “and it got worse to the point where I couldn’t stand up. … I was vomiting and had diarrhoea. I just lay there in pain for hours.”

When his bail was posted the following afternoon, he was in too much pain to leave his cell, so he was simply left lying on the floor until an ambulance was finally called, eighteen hours after his arrest. He was taken to a hospital, where he was due to undergo surgery on Friday afternoon to repair his spleen.

So far there are no additional sources to back up Sabeghi’s allegations of police brutality, but a spokesperson for the hospital did confirm to the Guardian that he had been admitted.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/04/second-iraq-war-vet-hospitalized-after-oakland-protest/