Crime & Law
Man Who Said He Was Tortured by Ex-CPD Detective at Guantanamo Bay Set to Testify
Judge Weighs Whether to Toss 1992 Murder Conviction
Leighton Criminal Court Building (Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)
A Mauritanian man is set to testify Monday about the torture he says he suffered at the hands of a former Chicago police detective while being held at Guantánamo Bay as a Cook County judge weighs whether to overturn the conviction in one of the most notorious murders in Chicago history.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi was held for 14 years, without charge or trial, in the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while federal officials probed whether he had belonged to or provided support for al-Qaida, the terror network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Slahi was released in 2016 and returned to Mauritania. Slahi is scheduled to appear virtually to testify about the abuse he says he suffered at the direction of former Chicago Police Detective Richard Zuley, a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve who was sent to Guantánamo after the terror attacks.
Circuit Court Judge Adrienne Davis is weighing whether to overturn the conviction of Anthony Garrett in connection with the murder of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis, who was shot and killed by a sniper at Cabrini-Green in 1992 as he and his mother walked to school.
A spokesperson for Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, who has opposed Garrett’s bid for a new trial, did not respond to a request for comment from WTTW News.
Dantrell’s killing outraged the city and became a symbol of the gang violence plaguing Chicago and the city’s notorious public housing. In 1992, 936 people were killed in Chicago, setting a record that still stands. By comparison, 378 people have been killed so far this year in Chicago.
Zuley testified during Garrett’s 1994 trial that he confessed to accidentally shooting the boy while firing at rival gang members from the 10th floor of a high-rise apartment building.
The weapon used to kill Dantrell was never found, gun powder residue was not found on Garrett’s clothing, and no one testified they saw Garrett kill the boy, court records show.
Garrett later recanted his confession.
Garrett said he was not informed of his rights or given access to an attorney before he was interrogated in a small windowless room, where he was denied access to the bathroom and prevented from lying down to sleep for more than 24 hours, court records show.
Garrett said he was beaten on at least two occasions with rubber hoses and a phone book on his torso, genitals and legs, court records show.
Garrett was convicted and sentenced to 100 years in prison.
In 2023, the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission found that there was “sufficient, credible evidence” that Garrett was tortured by Zuley, and urged that a Cook County judge review his conviction. That finding relied, in part, on Slahi’s testimony that Zuley tortured him at Guantánamo, records show.
While the former detective has denied coercing Garrett’s confession, “there is strong reason to distrust Detective Zuley’s accounts of what transpired in light of his incontrovertible pattern and practice history of allegations of torture,” the commission concluded.
A record of former CPD Detective Richard Zuley being sent from Chicago to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
The U.S. Senate report on torture at Guantánamo Bay identified Zuley as the official responsible for ordering the tactics designed to make Slahi confess to participating in terror attacks, including “hooding, sensory deprivation (and) sleep deprivation.”
Slahi’s book about the torture he suffered at Guantánamo Bay alleged he was “force-fed seawater, sexually molested, subjected to a mock execution and repeatedly beaten, kicked and smashed across the face, all spiced with threats that his mother will be brought to Guantánamo and gang-raped.”
Slahi’s book was turned into a 2021 movie starring Jodie Foster, “The Mauritanian.”
Zuley served at the same time as disgraced former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, who city officials admit tortured and beat more than 100 Black men during his career. Chicago taxpayers have now paid more than $155 million in lawsuit settlements and judgments related to Burge’s conduct, including $5.5 million in reparations for torture survivors, approved in 2015 by the Chicago City Council.
Burge was fired in 1993, but collected a taxpayer-funded pension until his death in 2018.
Returning from military service in 2004, Zuley retired from CPD in 2007 and worked as the director of emergency management for the Cook County Department of Public Health until 2010. Zuley served as a security administrator for the Chicago Department of Aviation until 2017.
Zuley, who joined CPD in 1970, collects an annual city taxpayer-funded pension of $94,580. Despite his extensive record of misconduct, Zuley has banked more than $1.3 million in pension payments since he retired, according to records obtained by WTTW News through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Illinois law allows the boards overseeing pension funds to strip employees of their pensions only if they are convicted of a felony “relating to or arising out of or in connection with” their job committed while employed by a state or local government agency. Zuley, who has never been charged with a crime, could not be reached for comment by WTTW News.
Earlier this year, the Chicago City Council agreed to pay $4 million to the family of Lee Harris, who spent 33 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of murdering a woman in 1989 in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.
Harris died shortly after being released from prison.
Zuley was the lead detective investigating the murder of 24-year-old Dana Feitler, who was forced to withdraw $400 from an ATM after being kidnapped from the lobby of her apartment building in the city’s most affluent neighborhood.
No physical evidence linked Harris to the crime, and the man who told police Harris confessed to him recanted, telling officials he had lied at the direction of Zuley and other CPD detectives in order to get favorable treatment.
At least three other Chicago men who were convicted of murder after Zuley said they confessed have been exonerated, records show. Two have sued the city, and those lawsuits are pending.
Zuley also served on the task force investigating the 1993 murder of seven employees at a Palatine Brown’s Chicken and Pasta and identified an informant who Zuley said identified the killer. That evidence was discredited after DNA evidence identified two other men in the slayings, and they were convicted.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
Contact Jared Rutecki: @JaredRutecki | [email protected]
