Case of Jose Padilla

[Grundy]

This is an American citizen who has been held since 2002 on the basis that he has links to terrorism. At this point he is basically so fucked up from his treatment that he cannot help himself. To avoid a ruling from SCOTUS on enemy combatants Federal charges were filed against him.

How the Govt has handled a citizen while waiting for trial:

Physical and mental torture
Total isolation including sensory deprivation
Sleeps on a steel platform
Had no access to laywer for 21 months.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/12/04/padilla.ap/index.html

[Noleader]

Land of the free...

[PoxTheSmall]

What would be really sad is if they prove that he's not a terrorist or enemy combatant...

What he's gone through has had to have been like living in complete and total hell.

[Grundy]

Finally had some kind of psuedo trial and Padilla (surprise) was found guilty. Could be guilty, could be innocent but unfortunately you can't trust anything the Govt says on these enemy combatant cases because they are a farce.

It would have been hilarious if the jury found him innocent and they set him free into society as a drooling retard. Keeping someone in isolation for 40 days is about the safe maximum so after 3.5 years in isolation Padilla is totally insane. "Yeah, about that, so sorry".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070816/padilla-terror-charges/

Some psychological tests place him on par with individuals who have suffered brain damage, according to the reports prepared by Hegarty, Grassian, and Patricia Zapf, a New York psychologist and psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Padilla's treatment in the brig is classified as a state secret.

Ironically, no one knows this better than Padilla himself. When Hegarty, the psychiatrist, asked him about his interrogation in the brig, Padilla responded: "I can't talk about what happened to me because it is classified."

from: http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=23381

[Noleader]

LOL he can't even sue for his treatment because it is classified... what bullshit

[Rooster]

How did I know some people here would defend this traitor... amazing.

[Noleader]

He was not tried for Treason... lets not unduly extend the changes he was found guilty for... I mean you always say how it is just the media and everyone should get their day in court before we pass judgement. Oh but does that only apply to Republicans?

I am also not defending them... I am commenting on how much bullshit it is that the man can not even seek damages for how the government, of which he is a citizen of, treated him while he was confined.

Are you seriously telling me you have no issue with him being restricted from discussing his treatment, and interrogation, with the press? The same press that our founders sought to protect and empower to explose the wrongdoing of our government?

[Post]

"Are you seriously telling me you have no issue with him being restricted from discussing his treatment, and interrogation, with the press?"

Why bother, he was already guilty.

[Allison]

No one is defending him. Hell, no one here even knows anything about the case really. For all we know, he's as innocent as the Virgin Mary, or as guilty as Eve ... but that's not the point. The point is that he is an American citizen who has been denied his rights for five long years. Is that okay with you?

If he really is a traitor, fine ... lock him up and throw away the key ... after he's been given his due process and been convicted of a crime. This is the fucking United States of America, for fuck's sake. We're the good guys, aren't we? Seriously, we're not living in some South American shithole where the government can carry off your relatives in the middle of the night, are we? This is the United States of America. He is an American citizen. He has rights, just like the rest of us. Period.

[malkovich]

no time for rights dr. jones ...

[Boom]

Who is defending this guy? Nice strawman argument.

No one is defending him. No one is questioning the verdict. We are defending the basic principles that this country is supposed to represent. It's in the Constitution. Cruel or inhuman treatment is not what this country is about.

If he really is a traitor we totally fucked ourselves because he now has endless appeals based on his treatment. If you support the policies that allow this treatment, you are supporting the terrorists.

No one is defending this guy. He is a bad guy. But we are supposed to be the good guys and not treat ANYONE this way. It is what our country was founded on. Innocent until proven guilty. Before he was proven guilty he was treated in a manner proven to destroy the human mind. Is that what America is about?

I can't believe anyone is defending our government's abuse and torture of American Citizens.

Libby was guilty too. Would it be ok to treat him like this? His crime was far worse, he was convicted of covering up the Bush Administration's outing of the CIA agent running the program to investigate Middle East WMDs and nuclear weapon programs.

Don't you realize that if we approve these kinds of procedures, they apply to all of us? You can just sit there and say, "Well, I am not a traitor so I have nothing to worry about." Well that may have been true before the Bush Admin decimated our rights, but its not true anymore. If I hack your computer and put some bomb plans on there and report you, Bush can label you an enemy combatant and treat you like they did to this guy. Sure, you are innocent, but how are you gonna prove it if you have no access to your lawyer, your family, or any human being for 5 years? How are you gonna prove your innocence if you are insane from the abuse by the time you get to trial.

I am glad they convicted this guy and I am glad he will be sentenced. That is the way it is supposed to work. But the fact that anyone was subject to this kind of treatment before being convicted is just incredibly unamerican.

[Boom]

Is this the way we treat American Citizens before they are convicted (when they are still technically innocent?)

The accused was held in extreme isolation for 1,307 days. Held in a nine-by-seven-foot cell. The only window blacked out. He was the lone prisoner on the two-tier cellblock. He was given food through a slot in the door. He slept on a steel mattress. No reading material. No calendar. No clock. Nothing to connect him to the outside world.

But it was the short trip down the hallway for a dental examination that captured the utter isolation and sensory deprivation inflicted on Jose Padilla during his 3 ½ years in the Navy brig at Charleston, S.C.

Helmeted guards, their faces obscured behind dark plastic visors, manacled his hands and feet through slots in his cell door. They covered his ears with sound-canceling headphones, covered his eyes with blacked-out goggles.

Padilla, mind you, has been described by his jailers as docile “as a piece of furniture.”

At that point, after months of a dehumanizing interrogation regime, any useful information had long been squeezed from him.

Try to imagine what that is like. Not just the lack of human interaction, but nothing to read, no TV, no window to look out of, nothing to see, nothing to hear. Just sit alone in a room, day after day while your mind eats itself.

Here is a pic of him being brought down the hall so a dentist could work on him.

http://static.firedoglake.com/2007/08/tmpphpkmcliy.jpg

Even just to walk down the hall he has a blindfold and headphones on so he can't see anything, can't hear anything. Keep in mind, this is still a "presumed innocent" American Citizen.

Expert psychologists describe this treatment as torture, totally designed to destroy a human being. Here is the account of the doctor that got to examine him.

He [Padilla] had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were “unfair to the commander-in-chief,” quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.

The second thing was his absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness…It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like…a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he …would subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened…

In this very small cell, he was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and the doors were managed electronically….He had no way of knowing the time. The light was always artificial. The windows were blackened. He had no calendar or time, as you mentioned earlier. He really didn’t see people, especially in the beginning. He only had contact with his interrogators. (LZK Note: Padilla had [yet] to be charged with a crime. He was experiencing this as a presumed innocent man.)
AMY GOODMAN: Did you conclude he had been tortured?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, “torture,” of course, is a legal term. However, as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured.
This was the first time I ever met anybody who had been isolated for such an extraordinarily long period of time. I mean, the sensory deprivation studies, for example, tell us that without sleep, especially, people will develop psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, panic attacks, depression, suicidality within days. And here we had a man who had been in this situation, utterly dependent on his interrogators, who didn’t treat him all that nicely, for years. And apart from — the only people I ever met who had such a protracted experience were people who were in detention camps overseas, that would come close, but even then they weren’t subjected to the sensory deprivation. So, yes, he was somewhat of a unique case in that regard.

AMY GOODMAN: How afraid was Jose Padilla?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: How to capture that in an apt metaphor? He was terrified. For him, the government was all-powerful. The government knew everything. The government knew everything that he was doing. His interrogators would find out every little detail that he revealed. And he would be punished for it.

He was convinced that — I mean, I think in words he endorsed — even if he won his case, he lost, because he was going back to the brig if he managed to prevail at trial. And essentially, if hypothetically one were to offer him a really long prison sentence versus — with a guarantee that he wouldn’t go back to the brig — versus risking going back to the brig, the chance that he might go back to the brig, he would take the prison sentence for a very long period of time. I think he would take almost anything rather than go back to that brig.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened in the brig?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind. That’s what happened at the brig. His personality was deconstructed and reformed.

One of the things that came out in the course of my evaluation was, he was required to sign his name John Doe. This kind of thing and the whole notion of dependency and the cultivation of dependency, the impact of sleep deprivation, stress positions, all of that was so coordinated it’s impossible for me to imagine that at least at some phase there wasn’t some mental health professionals involved.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And what was the reason for wanting to have him sign his name John Doe?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: He’s no longer a person. He’s no longer an individual. There will be no record that he was ever there, that the interrogators — this is from my knowledge of torture around the world — that the interrogators essentially will be absolutely immune to any accountability.
Emphasis mine.

Again, I am not defending him. I love it when bad guys go to trial and get convicted and sentenced. But I love it when we do it the way our Founding Fathers insisted we do it. As a civilized society. As the good guys. I am defending what used to be the core principles that this country was founded on. Jose Padilla can rot in jail for all I care, now that he has been convicted. But no American Citizen should be treated like that, expecially when he is still presumed innocent. This whole thing is bringing me very close to invoking Godwin's Law.

[]LoL[Harm]

I can't believe Rooster is defending a fascist act. As Allison said.

For fuck sake, this is fucking America.

But that's okay with Roo, who apparently gives two shits about real rights unless it has to do with Abortion or Guns.

[Boom]

To give Roo credit, when I first wrote about the suspension of Habeus Corpus, he sort of agreed that it wasn't a great idea although he wasn't as outraged as the rest of us.

But now that we have an example of what can happen due to the suspension of Habeus, he is ok with it, because in this particular case the American Citizen who was tortured before even being charged with a crime happened to be an actual bad guy.

The thing is, if any of us lose our rights, we all lose our rights. That is why even monsters like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer should be treated fairly before conviction. Everyone knew Bundy and Dahmer were guilty, they were fucking monsters, but we upheld their rights, not because they deserve it, but because we deserve it. That is the way America used to be before the Bush Administration. I am proud of the fact that Dahmer's rights were not violated. It makes our country great. I wanted to see Padilla convicted, but the fact that we fucking abused him into insanity while he was still presumed innocent is an embarrasment to everything this country stands for.

[Aelfwine]

We are defending the basic principles that this country is supposed to represent. It's in the Constitution. Cruel or inhuman treatment is not what this country is about.


I agree that this is bad, but come on now. This is not surprising. America has been doing shady "UnAmerican" stuff forever.

The America that cares about everyones rights and the constitution hasn't existed since it was founded. What about the indians rights? Slaves? Tuskegee? All the people blacklisted in the 50's? The kids shot at Kent state? All the drug related non violent offenders in jail?

You act as if this is all Bush's fault. George W is just carrying on the tradition.

[Boom]

So Bush is carrying on the tradition of the worst examples of government behavior in the history of our nation?

And that is ok?

Kent State wasn't Bush's fault. Suspending Habeus Corpus is his fault. Slavery wasn't Bush's fault. Bush declaring that the Geneva Convention no longer applies is Bush's fault. The illegal wiretapping done by Nixon was not Bush's fault. The illegal wiretapping done by Bush is Bush's fault.

I am not blaming Bush for every bad thing that ever happened, just the bad things that he has done.

Past misbehavior doesn't excuse current misbehavior. All the things you have listed (with the exception of potheads in jail) are generally acknowledged as horrible things that shouldn't have happened. Bush's behavior puts him in the same list as those other embarrasments.

[Aelfwine]

Of course its not ok. But your words, and Allisons, seem to imply that America was a bastion of liberty and freedom before Bush took office. Its just not true.

Yea, for the majority of us America is the best place to live in the world(though it pisses me off to no end that I am a 'criminal' in my own country cause I smoke weed), but there are also alot of people who never get to experience the American dream and there are numerous cases of people being abused by the system.

[]LoL[Harm]

Are we not supposed to be a bastion of liberty and freedom? Isn't that what we walk around the world, proclaiming? Are we then just a country of hipocrasy? We have some minor problems but as far as Freedom and Liberty go, we're supposed to be leading in the world...at least that's the way it used to be.

Freedom and Liberty aren't things that you get once and then always have. To have these things is a constant struggle against the natrual tendancy of the strong to dominate over those who are weak. You don't write the Constitution as it stands and then go to bed feeling your work is over.

If the people don't give a fucking shit (which is has become abundantly clear that they do not), then in the end we will continue to see this type of thing become more common, where rights of a US citizen don't mean shit in the eyes of the government because the people don't care.

The government is a direct reflection of our interest in it. America isn't interested in the government and therefore it is falling under the sway of it's own desires instead of our own. And this apathy by everyone about things as blatant as this, just makes me want to fucking hope our country fails, that we are awakened one day by a coup or some dictatorship so maybe the American ideals of freedom and liberty will actually mean something to the masses, and we will then rise up to defend them.

We are indolent. And it makes me so very very very sad.

[Noleader]

LoL[Harm;147377']The government is a direct reflection of our interest in it. America isn't interested in the government and therefore it is falling under the sway of it's own desires instead of our own. And this apathy by everyone about things as blatant as this, just makes me want to fucking hope our country fails, that we are awakened one day by a coup or some dictatorship so maybe the American ideals of freedom and liberty will actually mean something to the masses, and we will then rise up to defend them.

That day will come... Over the past 100 years we have surrendered more and more rights to the federal government. If it happens in my lifetime I will be one of the first to answer the call to defend.

[MickeyFinn]

From what I read, it looks like he didn't actually do anything. He was convicted of planning on doing a lot of bad things, none of which were the reasons he was arrested in the first place. Hmm.

[Solomente]

How did I know some people here would defend this traitor... amazing.

Simple... by using the same powers of deduction the rest of us used to know you would blindly defend the government's gross abuse of power and violation of the Constitution.

[Grundy]

Justifying the State's pre-trial actions on the accused based soley on the crimes being alleged is some scary logic.

In this case its saying, "He is an alleged terrorist therefore the Constitution doesnt apply here"

I dont see how the Constitution would ever allow the situation where just having the crime alleged means you lose all of your rights and justifies state sanctioned torture etc.

[MickeyFinn]

We're using their methods against them Grundy! If WE are the terrorists, then the terrorists are terrorizing their own terrorism! Shock and awe.