J6 political prisoner Zachary Rehl, one of the four leaders of the Proud Boys who was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, called The Gateway Pundit to share good news and thank all of our readers for helping him and his co-defendants finally get released from solitary confinement.
“The American people putting pressure on the jail and made them finally give in and do the right thing,” Rehl told TGP. “The jail was getting persistent phone calls and emails from people.”
“They were getting tired of dealing with it. We would like to thank you all, every single one of you who wrote letters and emails and made phone calls to help us. You have no idea the difference you have made in our lives.”
At the Alexandria jail, visitors of inmates in solitary confinement are required to sit in small booths in a 3-by-10-foot corridor with glass partitions separating them from inmates. Telephones are on each side and conversations are government surveilled.
When Rehl was apprehended by the FBI during a predawn raid of his home on March 17, 2021, his wife was six months pregnant. Rehl will see his daughter who is now 2 years old for the first time this weekend at the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania jail, where they are permitted 3-hour contact visits.
“My wife is coming up here. She’s going to be bringing the baby. I am going to see her for the first time in prison,” he continued, crying tears of joy. “It’s awesome. It’s a nice break for sure.”
For months, attorneys representing the Proud Boys told TGP they have no idea why their clients were being held in the hole for years. Solitary confinement is typically reserved as a punitive measure for up to 15 weeks. Biggs surmised they are being treated like Osama-Bin-Laden terrorists.
On May 4, a Biden-supporting jury returned guilty verdicts of seditious conspiracy and multiple felonies against the Proud Boy leaders.
After the six-month-long trial, the five defendants hoped the dire situation would ease up when they would, at least temporarily, be released from the six-by-eight-foot cells they have been held captive in for 23 hours a day.
They were told they were told by jail administrators that would be transferred or released from solitary in a few days.
Visitations at the jail suddenly shut down on May 6 and remain suspended allegedly because the jail’s elevator is broken. But inmates, including Tarrio, who are housed on the first floor of the jail were also barred visitation. TGP was told lawyers are permitted to take the stairs to visit their clients.
For weeks, the political prisoners’ families and advocates of J6 defendants across the country inundated the US Marshalls Office, Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin’s office, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, members of Congress and state senators with letters, emails, and phone calls demanding answers for why the five political prisoners were being subjected to the torturous conditions.
Serial sexual predators and murderers were detained in solitary confinement alongside the Proud Boys at the Alexandria jail.
Meanwhile, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir, the Lockerbie bomber, is currently detained in the general population of the Alexandria Detention facility, Rehl told TGP two days before he was transferred to Lewisburg.
Al-Marimi, a Libyan intelligence official who bombed a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground.
SUPPORT ZACHARY REHL HERE.
In an email sent to the defendants’ families obtained by TGP, Chief Deputy Gordon said he directed the jail’s Inmate Management Team to “assess” and “resolve” the situation by May 25.
“I am in receipt of the various emails and documents which have been sent to several members of our Office related to the current housing status of residents Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Joseph Biggs, Enrique Tarrio and Dominic Pezzola. Let me start by letting you know that I hear you and empathize with our obvious concern for your loved one’s wellbeing,” Gordon wrote. “In order to get a holistic view of this situation and to allow our Office to make a determination on any adjustments that may be warranted, I have directed members of our Inmate Management Team to conduct a review of the current housing plans for each of these inmates and report back to me their assessments.
“In an effort to avoid any further delay, I am committed to having this resolved by 5 pm (ET) this Thursday, May 25, 2023. Additionally, I will not be responding to any future group emails regarding this matter and intend to communicate the decision to each of these residents individually and in person.”
A week later, the Proud Boys were told they are a “threat to the jail’s general population and the jail’s general population is a threat to them” and therefore must remain at the jail in solitary confinement.
But Americans across the country doubled down on their efforts, bombarding the jail and their representatives with phone calls and emails demanding their release into general population.
“I called the governor’s office several times. They were receptive. The governor’s aid said, ‘Thank you for letting us know this is happening’ and directed us to the Attorney General’s office,” Suzanne Monk, an advocate for the political prisoners, told TGP. “Now that we are aware of the conditions of that jail and how they are torturing the inmates, we are not going to stop until there’s reform.”
Last week, at 4 a.m. Rehl and his co-defendants Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Enrique Tarrio were awoken by correction officers, cuffed and escorted onto a bus.
They were told by guards that continuing to detain them in isolation has become a liability.
“They don’t have to deal with backlash over any other prisoners,” Rehl said. “But they dealt with it with us and they said it was more of a headache for them than anything.”
After years of isolation in a windowless cell the size of a small bathroom at the Alexandria Detention Facility, Rehl, Nordean, Biggs and Tarrio were transferred.
Now they are allotted an entire cell block with privileges permitted to the jail’s general population, and even the small freedoms we take for granted are miraculous.
Rehl described how finally eating a real meal and stepping in sunlight for the first time in almost three years is an answer to their prayers.
“It was crazy to have the sun beam down on us for the first time in so long,” he said. “I got really, really light over the last two and half years – getting no sunlight is painful.
“All four of us were like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing.’ Joe was laying down on the table just trying to soak up the sun. It was awesome.”
The four Proud Boy leaders will likely be forced back to solitary confinement when they return to DC to be sentenced. But for now, Rehl says they are each filled with immense gratitude to have the government’s foot off their neck for a brief time and for the people who helped make it happen.
“We cannot thank you all enough for all of your support. The success story of us moving shows the work the American people do does work sometimes. This is just a break though. We are going to go back to DC. They are going to put us back in that tiny cell,” he said. “But all the work people are doing is doing something. It’s doing something.”
“If people urge Congress to release all the J6 footage and ask them to investigate internal communications that day to see who gave orders to push the crowd back — that’s important — it could make a big difference.”
Rehl, Nordean, Tarrio and Biggs are still adjusting to being able to walk again after the years spent in the tiny cell.
“We are enjoying the summer here, for now. Now we actually have some food,” Rehl said. “The other guys are playing cards now and watching TV. We are technically not in the general population, but it’s a block that would be general population. It’s a giant empty block and it’s, like, all ours.”
“There’s a big, long hallway with a bunch of cells. There’s another area where there’s like a theater room, then there’s another big giant area where you can watch TV, play cards. There are about two other January 6ers in this jail, other pretrial people here. There’s really not a lot of people on the block at all.”
“It’s funny, I stopped in Joe’s cell, he was doing a puzzle. He realized, ‘I don’t have to sit in this cell and do this puzzle though — let’s go to the TV room.’”
Pezzola, the only Proud Boy acquitted of the seditious conspiracy charges, was left behind at the Alexandria Detention Center until Wednesday when he was transferred back to the hole in the DC Central Detention Facility. Pezzola will be held in solitary confinement at the DC gulag to “quarantine” for two weeks before he is moved back to the “patriot pod” where J6ers are detained.
Tarrio did not attend the J6 rally on January 6 and was not in Washington, DC during the riot.
Rehl, Biggs, and Nordean walked into the Capitol building for approximately 20 minutes and committed no violent crimes.
As police fired rubber bullets, flash grenades and tear gas at the crowd of demonstrators from an incline on the Capitol steps, Pezzola became incensed. Moments after witnessing Joshua Black get shot in the face, Pezzola grabbed a police shield for protection and, in a moment of rage, banged a stick into a window of the Capitol building. He then walked around the Capitol Building for 15 minutes, returned the shield to a police officer and returned to his hotel.
Pezzola’s attorney Steven Metcalf contends the unjustified use of lethal force employed by law enforcement against unarmed demonstrators on J6 escalated a typical protest “to a whole different level,” igniting outrage amongst the crowd “and rightfully so.”
The government included Pezzola, who joined the Proud Boys just 30 days prior to J6, as a co-defendant in the Proud Boys’ leadership seditious conspiracy case to “muck” the other defendants with violent charges, Metcalf maintains.
Months after the FBI arrested Rehl, Nordean, Biggs, Tarrio, Biggs, and Pezzola for their role related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, the Justice Department ramped up their charges, alleging they premeditated a terror attack akin to 9/11 on January 6.
On June 6, 2022, they were charged with “seditious conspiracy.” Prior to January 6, seditious conspiracy charges were leveled against defendants who targeted and killed Americans.
Judge Timothy Kelly will sentence the Proud Boys’ in late August. All five of the defendants will be appealing the conviction.
Judge Kelly just set the Proud Boys’ sentencing dates:
Enrique Tarrio: 8/30 10am
Ethan Nordean: 8/30 2pm
Joe Biggs: 8/31 at 10am
Zach Rehl: 8/31 2pm
Dominic Pezzola: 9/1 10am— Roger Parloff (@rparloff) May 16, 2023
Rehl, who was previously represented by public defender Carmen Hernandez is raising funds to afford private counsel by renowned constitutional attorney Norm Pattis.
**SUPPORT ZACHARY REHL HERE.**
This story originally appeared on TheGateWayPundit
