Torture

I’m a little late on this, but I wanted to mention yesterday’s New York Times piece on the detention of Jose Padilla in a Navy brig. Glenn Greenwald, LizardBreath, Digby and Prof. B all offer comprehensive takes on the article and the issues surrounding Padilla’s treatment.

As Glenn points out, the only reason we’re seeing the videotape of Padilla on a visit to the dentist being not just shackled, but put into sensory-deprivation goggles and earphones, is that the Supreme Court ordered the government to transfer Padilla — an American citizen — from military detention into the criminal system, which offers a measure of transparency and allows the defense to obtain evidence.

The Supremes also ordered the government to charge him or let him go. And when it came time to do that, the government’s story of dirty bombs and plots against America suddenly didn’t hold up.

After he was arrested in 2002, Jose Padilla was considered so dangerous that he was held without charges in a military prison for more than three years — accused first of plotting a radiological “dirty bomb” attack and later of conspiring with al-Qaeda to blow up apartment buildings with natural gas.

But now, nearly a year after his abrupt transfer into a regular criminal court, the Justice Department’s prosecution of the former Chicago gang member is running into trouble. . .

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced Padilla’s indictment in late 2005, when he was added to a previous terrorism-support case in South Florida. By moving Padilla into criminal court, the administration managed to sidestep a potential ruling from the Supreme Court on whether the government had the authority to hold a U.S. citizen such as Padilla without charges.

The indictment did not mention the previous allegations against Padilla, or any planned attacks on U.S. soil. Instead, it alleged that Padilla joined two other defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, in funneling money to terrorist groups for battles overseas.

So, he’s essentially charged with money laundering. This is how money launderers are treated in military prisons:

In a motion to dismiss the case in October, federal public defender Michael Caruso and his team also alleged that Padilla “was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention. The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the loss of will to live. The base ingredient in Mr. Padilla’s torture was stark isolation for a substantial portion of his captivity.”

Among other things, the defense alleges that Padilla was held for 1,307 days in a 9-by-7-foot cell, isolated for days or weeks at a time, physically assaulted and threatened with execution and other violence, kept awake with lights and noises, and forced to take mind-altering drugs, possibly PCP or LSD.

All of these methods were authorized as interrogation techniques by Donald Rumsfeld, according to Gen. Janis Karpinski, former commander at Abu Ghraib, who testified before a German court last year that she had seen such a memo bearing Rumsfeld’s signature at Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld is now being sued for war crimes in the German courts, which have universal jurisdiction.

Padilla’s isolation in the Navy brig was profound. His windows were blacked out, he had no reading material, no clock, no one to talk to other than his interrogators (he was alone in an isolation wing of the prison). Atrios had a post yesterday about just how long the mental effects of such isolation have been known. A diary from an excavated 1830s prison showed that prisoners in sensory-deprivation isolation showed signs of mental breakdown within six to twelve months.

Padilla had been held in isolation for three years.

Padilla’s lawyers — and he was not allowed access to a lawyer until 21 months of his initial detention had passed — are trying to have him declared unfit for trial. The torture he has endured, and the isolation, have so broken him that he is unable to give effective assistance in his own defense:

In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months. Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla was held alone in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, “as part of an interrogation plan.”. . .

Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y., who examined Mr. Padilla for a total of 22 hours in June and September, said in an affidavit filed Friday that he “lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense.”

“It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation,” Dr. Hegarty said in an affidavit for the defense.

Padilla has been described by his captors as having the temperament of a “piece of furniture.” He also cannot trust the people who are there to help him:

But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless mistrustful. “Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation scheme,” Mr. Patel said.

Mr. do Campo said that Mr. Padilla was not incommunicative, and that he expressed curiosity about what was going on in the world, liked to talk about sports and demonstrated particularly keen interest in the Chicago Bears.

But the defense lawyers’ questions often echo the questions interrogators have asked Mr. Padilla, and when that happens, he gets jumpy and shuts down, the lawyers said.

Padilla represents a big problem for the government. Because he is an American citizen, they have had trouble hanging onto him without charging him. But now that he’s in the criminal-justice system, their case against him isn’t looking too hot (though, of course, the true believers believe otherwise). The judge has already thrown out the most serious charge in the indictment, and when you take a case to trial, you always stand a chance of losing. Particularly if you present evidence that hasn’t been made available to the defendant.

So long as they hold Padilla, and delay his trial, and refuse to admit that they fucked up, he can’t yet bring certain claims for violations of his civil rights, so there won’t be any discovery into the conditions of his confinement. They also can control who he speaks to and what he says. Obviously, with the distrust they’ve created between him and his lawyers, his lawyers have had a tough time getting a full picture of what he’s been going through.

But maybe they never have to let him go. He has been declared an “enemy combatant,” after all, and Congress just passed the Military Commissions Act, which will undoubtedly be used to throw him back in the brig — legally or not — should the civilian courts acquit him or order his release.