Newly unsealed documents about the retaking of New York's Attica prison in the aftermath of a 1971 riot reveal witness and inmate accounts of torture, burns and sexual abuse by prison officials.
Police and guards regained control of the prison on 13 September 1971, ending a five-day riot that left 43 inmates, officers and civilians dead.
The documents, released on Thursday after a two-year appeal by the state attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, amount to 46 pages of a multi-volume 1975 report by Judge Bernard Meyer, who was appointed to investigate whether there was a cover-up of what happened at the prison.
In the unsealed documents, Meyer wrote that investigators failed to interview people who could have described horrific abuses, and who could have identified the perpetrators if they had been contacted promptly. Abuses continued against inmates, witnesses said, after police and guards regained control.
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