The detained protester was beaten, lost an eye, has blood clots, and precancerous growths.
QUICK FACTS:
- Jan. 6 protester Ryan Samsel has been held at a Washington D.C. area prison where he has been brutally beaten and denied medical treatment.
- Reports indicate that several months after his initial arrest, Samsel was beaten by officers at the corrections facility, while his hands were zip-tied.
- The detainee had his face smashed to the point that he lost an eye, and he was tied to a chair for 12 hours.
- Samsel now has blood clots and precancerous growths and he has not been allowed to have medical treatment
- Reporters who spoke to Samsel and fellow Jan. 6 detainee Dominic Pezzola said Samsel says his kidney is ruptured, and the side of his face was broken, and that occurred before the growths in his chest began to spread.
INTERVIEW WITH SAMSEL:
- When speaking to reporters, Samsel said he doesn’t like to talk about his assaults over the phone because he’s concerned about recordings and in fear for his life. He said he’s been assaulted on three different occasions.
- One of the alleged beatings resulted in a trip to the hospital, and when Pezzola questioned why his friend was beaten, he was reportedly informed that the orders came from the FBI.
- “I was the first one to see Ryan after they beat him. They beat him good. I mean, his eyes were swollen shut, black and blue and everything,” Pezzola said.
- Talking about his trip to the hospital, Samsel clarified that they did not give him appropriate medical treatment: ” So they took me to the hospital, and Howard University Hospital found I had a blood clot, my left shoulder, and I had a broken face, I had a broken nose, a ruptured kidney, and they ordered I get further treatment, and they never gave me that.”
- “So then I went to a vascular surgeon after the assault in Virginia, and she said she recommended that I go to physical rehab. And the prosecutor, which name is Karen Rocklin, she denied me that. And then when I went to Warsaw, that’s where I got the worst beaten. They broke the right side of my face, and I have a blood clot and my right head, and they left me in a chair for about ten to 12 hours,” Samsel said of his injuries.
- Samsel also asserts that because of his worsening condition, the corrections facility squirted something “up my nostril and said that I overdosed on drugs. And then when they tested me for drugs, I obviously came up negative. So they tried to cover up, but when I went to the hospital, the doctor at the hospital was the same doctor at the jail. It’s the same doctor. And he had to mark that it was an assault. And they took pictures. And from there, they transferred me out.
BACKGROUND:
- Samsel’s attorney, Joseph McBride, spoke on Newsmax in July of 2021 to talk about some of the physical attacks on his client, saying of the Jan. 6 detainees that “their constitutional rights and human rights are being violated by the Department of Justice and the Federal Government at this very moment.”
- McBride went on to assert that “numerous detainees are being held in solitary confinement for long periods of time. They’re being denied medical care. They’re taking beatings. They’re being denied sleep. They’re being psychologically, emotionally, and physically tortured on a regular basis.”
