A former US Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans' group said he was beaten by police during clashes with anti-Wall Street demonstrators this week. Kayvan Sabeghi, 32, was arrested and hospitalised about a week after another US military veteran, former Marine Scott Olsen, was badly injured in a confrontation with police that helped spark the latest round of unrest.
The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot. Police arrested more than 100 demonstrators in clashes with protesters late on Wednesday and early on Thursday following a day of mostly peaceful rallies against economic inequality, corporate excesses and bailouts of major banks.
Several bank branches were closed and the Port of Oakland was shut down for several hours by the demonstrations. Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.
"He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him," Kelly said, adding that Sabeghi had served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours," he said. The Oakland Police Department did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
The veterans' group said in a statement that police struck Sabeghi with night-sticks on his hands, shoulders, ribs and back, and that in addition to a lacerated spleen he suffered from internal bleeding. Sabeghi's name was listed by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office as among those arrested that night, and Highland General Hospital confirmed he was a patient in its intensive care unit.
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