Jose Padilla's Mind has been Effectively Erased

[tsoldrin]

Oh certainly, escape is the better part of valor Thinking along the lines of the 'terrists' though... and there are actually some real ones, they would have nothing to gain by allowing themselves to be caught. Basically this policy puts everyone on both sides of the equation in more danger.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Good point tho we are all terrists now.

[Gouda]

The US psychological torture system is finally on trial
America has deliberately driven hundreds, perhaps thousands, of prisoners insane. Now it is being held to account in a Miami court

[Not if Judge Cooke, the media, and the history system can help it.
The other upside for the sado-salocracy is that Padilla goes on display as an example. -- Gouda]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story ... 41,00.html

According to his lawyers and two mental health specialists who examined him, Padilla has been so shattered that he lacks the ability to assist in his own defence. He is convinced that his lawyers are "part of a continuing interrogation program" and sees his captors as protectors. In order to prove that "the extended torture visited upon Mr Padilla has left him damaged", his lawyers want to tell the court what happened during those years in the navy brig. The prosecution strenuously objects, maintaining that "Padilla is competent" and that his treatment is irrelevant.

The US district judge Marcia Cooke disagrees. "It's not like Mr Padilla was living in a box. He was at a place. Things happened to him at that place." The judge has ordered several prison employees to testify on Padilla's mental state at the hearings, which began yesterday. They will be asked how a man who is alleged to have engaged in elaborate anti-government plots now acts, in the words of brig staff, "like a piece of furniture".

(...)

Many have suffered the same symptoms as Padilla. According to James Yee, a former army Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo, there is an entire section of the prison called Delta Block for detainees who have been reduced to a delusional state. "They would respond to me in a childlike voice, talking complete nonsense. Many of them would loudly sing childish songs, repeating the song over and over." All the inmates of Delta Block were on 24-hour suicide watch.

[Gouda]

US judge rejects Padilla (His Lawyers' - Gouda] demand to cancel trial
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_judge_r ... 02007.html

Judge Marcia Cooke ruled Monday that allegations of abuse in military custody provided no legal grounds to call off a federal trial for Padilla as there was no indication he had been mistreated at the hands of civilian government authorities.

"Padilla makes no allegations regarding outrageous government conduct prior to his arrest, during the course of his arrest or during his civilian custodial detention in connection with the crimes charged in the indictment," the judge wrote in her decision.

"Mr. Padilla also makes no claim of prosecutorial misconduct related to the government's efforts to try this case," the judge added.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Call Dr. Colin Ross and let him see what's happened to people in the hands of the USG.

[Gouda]

Is this CS Monitor piece (which does provide important testimony on Padilla's mental state and the obvious psycho-torture that went into altering his mind) actually implying that if US interrogation methods had not "gone too far," had been toned down, then all would be OK with this case? Is it legitimating the overall War on Terror while merely critiquing its spotty implementation? -- Gouda

****

US terror interrogation went too far, experts say - Reports find that Jose Padilla's solitary confinement led to mental problems.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0813/p01s03-usju.htm

By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Miami

Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush ordered him detained in 2002 as a suspected Al Qaeda operative. But he does now.

The Muslim convert was subjected to prison conditions and interrogation techniques that took him past the breaking point, mental health experts say.

Two psychiatrists and a psychologist who conducted detailed personal examinations of Mr. Padilla on behalf of his defense lawyers say his extended detention and interrogation at the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., left him with severe mental disabilities. All three say he may never recover.

Padilla's psychological condition is important because his situation marks the first time an enemy combatant in the war on terror is in a position to present a verifiable claim of abuse at the hands of US interrogators. Padilla's mental health itself is a form of evidence, mental-health experts say, and it strongly suggests that – at least in Padilla's case – the government's harsh interrogation and confinement tactics went too far.

Padilla is currently on trial in Miami on terror conspiracy charges. Prosecutors say he was a willing Al Qaeda recruit who attended a training camp in Afghanistan. He denies the allegations. Closing arguments in the three-month trial are slated to begin Monday.

Beyond the outcome of his Miami trial, larger issues loom. Chief among them, legal scholars say, is whether Mr. Bush acted within his constitutional authority when he ordered Padilla, a United States citizen, held without charge as an enemy combatant at the brig for three years and seven months.

Padilla's treatment in the brig raises another issue, these scholars say: whether the Constitution ever permits the government to force a man to confess to involvement in terrorist plots and, in doing so, risk destruction of a portion of his mind.

Defense Department officials reject charges that Padilla was mistreated. "The government in the strongest terms denies Padilla's allegations of torture – allegations made without support and without citing a shred of record evidence," writes Navy Commander J.D. Gordon, a spokesman for the secretary of Defense, in an e-mail. "Any credible allegations of illegal conduct by US military personnel are taken seriously and looked into in painstaking detail."

He adds, "There has never been a substantiated case of detainee abuse at Charleston Navy brig."

The Padilla mental-health issue arises as the Bush administration faces increasing pressure to balance the requirements of the criminal justice system against the demands of its intelligence-collection system. Information about Padilla's detention and interrogation at the brig is classified. But his mental health status can't be kept secret.

Rare window into detention

His psychological reports are on file in his Miami court case. The three reports total 34 pages and offer a rare window into the psychological effects of Padilla's experience in the brig. The mental-health experts were retained by Padilla's lawyers for testimony during pretrial motions. The reports reflect their professional judgments offered to a reasonable degree of medical certainty.

In Padilla's case, these experts say, the pattern of signs and symptoms clearly suggest their origin is the brig . Unlike many allegations of harm from interrogation methods, Padilla's mental condition – and the probable cause of his mental disabilities – can be critically assessed and verified by an independent panel of mental-health professionals, provided Padilla cooperates, these and other psychology experts say.

The judge in Padilla's criminal case has already ruled that Padilla is suffering from a mental disability, but she refused to allow defense lawyers to explore the issue of whether the disability was caused by Padilla's treatment in the brig.

US intelligence officials had good reason to want to learn what Padilla knew. He was detained on suspicion that he was plotting with Al Qaeda to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" in the US. He was arrested eight months after the 9/11 attacks as he stepped off a plane in Chicago from the Middle East. Officials were worried about the possibility of a second wave of terror attacks and the presence of sleeper cells in the US.

Padilla's interrogation was designed to overcome his will to keep silent, and then to wring from him every detail of what officials thought he might know of Al Qaeda's plans and operations.

Bush and other administration officials have repeatedly said that America does not use torture. They stress that all terror suspects are treated humanely.

"There have been 12 major reviews conducted of detention operations over the past several years, none of which found there was any policy that ever condoned abuse," says Commander Gordon, the Pentagon spokesman. "The reviews have resulted in numerous recommendations which have been implemented and have improved our detention operations."

The mental-health experts say their focus is on Padilla, not on policies.

"He is not the same man who was taken into custody in 2002," says Angela Hegarty, a forensic psychiatrist in New York who spent 22 hours examining Padilla. "Whatever happened to him in there has radically changed him."

Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, says Padilla's experience in the brig has left members of his family stunned and frightened. "People who have known him and loved him before his military detention don't feel they can even bear to see him because he is so clearly mentally ill."

Tricky issue: US citizenship

The administration has faced criticism for using harsh interrogation tactics on foreign enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay and other locations overseas. But Padilla's situation is unique.

Padilla is a US citizen who was arrested and detained on US soil. Because of this status, his case was closely followed at the highest levels of the US government. The president himself signed the order authorizing Padilla's detention.

In 2002, the Justice Department produced a "torture" memo stating that victims would have to experience pain equivalent to organ failure to prove torture.

"The development of a mental disorder such as post-traumatic stress disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression, which can last a considerable period of time if untreated, might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement" to prove torture, the memo says.

Drs. Hegarty and Grassian say Padilla's psychological condition exceeds even the high standard for mental damage set by the 2002 torture memo. "This whole issue of torture turns on the question of what are the types of effects that one would expect from putting a person in this situation in the brig," says Grassian. "If you would expect a person to become so deranged as to become psychotically terrified, to me that constitutes torture."

The issue is not new. Lawyers representing Padilla in his criminal case in Miami filed motions last year charging that their client had been tortured while in military custody. They said the abuse rendered Padilla mentally incompetent to assist in his own defense at trial.

But in a February hearing, US District Judge Marcia Cooke sidestepped the torture accusations. She ruled that even though mental-health experts had identified mental disabilities, Padilla was competent enough to face prosecution.

"The mere fact that the defendant is suffering from a mental disease or defect does not render the defendant incompetent to stand trial," Judge Cooke declared.

Mental-health experts say that a legal determination of competence to stand trial doesn't undercut the severity of Padilla's existing mental disabilities.

Throughout his three-month trial in Miami, Padilla has sat quietly at the defense table. He looks more the part of a legal assistant in his charcoal gray suit with neatly cropped hair and eyeglasses than the radical jihadist he is alleged to have become. He turns and smiles to his mother when she attends the trial. But unlike his two codefendants he rarely interacts with his lawyers.

'I saw this individual happy ... joking'

A Bureau of Prisons psychologist who examined Padilla prior to the court competency hearing, found that Padilla was suffering from mental disabilities. But Dr. Rodolfo Buigas disagreed with the other mental-health experts on the severity of Padilla's conditions, painting a somewhat rosy picture of the onetime military detainee. "I saw this individual happy. I saw this individual joking in the context of the evaluation. I saw the full, broad range of emotions," Dr. Buigas testified.

The psychologist also testified that Padilla declined to answer most of his questions, including his date of birth, and refused to participate in any psychological testing during the six hours the two men spent together.

Others with more significant interaction with Padilla say his brig experience has left him in a state of mental disorganization.

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."

Although Padilla has been meeting with his Miami lawyers for more than a year and a half, he refuses to discuss his treatment in the brig in any detail.

The torture allegations made last year in the Miami court case were raised as a result of repeated sessions asking Padilla "yes or no" whether he'd endured the kinds of harsh interrogation tactics reported in the press. He reluctantly answered yes to some, and no to others. But his lawyers could pry no details or narrative from him.

They asked Hegarty for help.

He changed the subject and twitched

She spent days attempting to establish a rapport, days trying to get him to open up. "The first two hours were utterly useless each day. I got no data at all," Hegarty says. Eventually he would relax and talk about relatively minor subjects. When Hegarty tried to steer him toward the brig or the evidence in his criminal case "he would just stop, change the subject, and twitch," she said.

During her week-long effort, Hegarty would arrive each morning to discover Padilla once again unwilling to talk. She says the experience was like the movie "Groundhog Day," in which the same events repeat over and over. "The 22 hours I spent with him, it was like it never happened," Hegarty says. "It was chilling."

Grassian relates in his report that Padilla's mother found it emotionally difficult to visit her son in Miami because it involved observing his diminished mental condition. Padilla tried to reassure her that he was fine, that the government was treating him very well. At one point, Grassian says, Padilla suggested that his mother write directly to Bush to help her speed through red tape to arrange her next visit. The president was sure to help her out, Padilla assured his mother.

"It was utterly irrational," Grassian writes in his report. "After all, it was President Bush who had ordered him detained as an enemy combatant."

Padilla's mother became increasingly anxious. Finally she confronted her son: "Did they torture you?" she asked.

"He turned towards her, his face grimacing, his eyes blinking, and in panic and rage he demanded: 'Don't you ever, ever, ask that question again,' " the Grassian report says.

What makes Padilla's case especially challenging from a psychological perspective is that he denies having any symptoms of psychological distress. Experts say it is an attempt by Padilla to avoid being viewed in any way as mentally disturbed.

"He was told not to talk about what happened in the brig and that if he ever spoke about what happened, people would think he was crazy," Hegarty says. "This admonition has power over him," she says. "He becomes visibly terrified as he is saying it."

Critical focus on the brig

Hegarty, Grassian, and Zapf all agree that Padilla exhibits symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and that he has become psychotically disorganized. They say that Padilla's ordeal in the brig was so psychologically unsettling that it has left him terrorized. Any reminder of the ordeal through questions by his lawyers or others, triggers a recurrence of the disorganizing terror Padilla experienced in the brig, they say.

"As soon as you try to approach a subject related to the brig he starts grimacing and you can just see he becomes mentally disorganized. Anyone who watched this with a reasonably unbiased eye would find it so creepy," Grassian says. "You can see the terror come out of him."

Padilla has been on trial in Miami since May on charges that he became a willing Al Qaeda recruit. The government never presented any part of the alleged "dirty-bomb" plot in the case, and some analysts say the government's cobbled-together case against Padilla is weak.

It is unclear what Padilla thinks about the possibility of an acquittal in Miami. But Hegarty says that if Padilla's lawyers win the case it could mark the worst possible outcome for him. That's because the president might try to move Padilla back to his old cell in the brig.

"There is no question in my mind that his first and most important priority is to not go back to the brig," Hegarty says. "This is what leaves me chilled, if one were to offer him a long prison term or return to the brig, he would take prison, in a heartbeat."

She adds, "He told me more than once that if he went back to the brig he knew what he had to do." Her notes reflect Padilla's hints of suicide.

Worst outcome: a return to the brig

Although it is still unknown exactly what happened to Padilla during his three years and seven months in the Charleston brig, Hegarty says this much is certain – for Padilla returning to the brig would be a fate worse than death.

Legally, Padilla isn't at a dead end. Last year, three justices of the Supreme Court issued a highly unusual warning. If the government attempts to take Padilla back to the brig, they said, Padilla could, if necessary, appeal directly to the highest court in the land.

Some longtime court-watchers suggest Padilla already has the support of at least five of the nine justices, and maybe more.

When Padilla's case originally reached the high court in 2004, it was dismissed on technical grounds by a 5-to-4 vote. The vote allowed the continued harsh treatment of Padilla.

Justice John Paul Stevens, a US Navy intelligence officer during World War II, filed a dissent. He quoted a 1949 opinion by then Justice Felix Frankfurter.

It said: "There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men."

When did Padilla's mental problems begin?

If Jose Padilla's mental disabilities are evidence that US coercive interrogation tactics are too harsh, a key issue is when the disabilities began.

It's possible they began before he was detained by the US military.

In a pretrial hearing in Mr. Padilla's terror conspiracy case in Miami, a prosecutor said that perhaps they stemmed from his time in Pakistan or his alleged time in Afghanistan. Padilla was in the region during US operations in Afghanistan in 2001 and early 2002, a time of massive US bombing raids and other military action. But the prosecutor offered no evidence.

Conversely, several pieces of evidence suggest that the problems began at the Navy brig in South Carolina.

In May 2002, a month before he entered the brig, Padilla was taken into custody, held in New York City, and given access to a court-appointed lawyer, Donna Newman. Two years later, when the Bush administration first allowed Padilla to see his lawyers again, Ms. Newman and another attorney visited.

"There is no question he had changed," Newman says. "Prior to his being held in South Carolina there was no reason to suspect that he had any kind of [mental] problem."

She adds, "After his being held in the brig ... his focus seemed less direct, his eye contact was similarly diminished, and he was more taciturn."

"Mr. Padilla had no evidence of any mental illness prior to his arrest and incarceration in 2002," writes Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, in his report for Padilla's defense team. He examined medical documents and interviewed Padilla's family, including his mother, siblings, and ex-wife.

Patricia Zapf, a New York psychologist, also retained by the defense, quotes Padilla's mother in her report as saying that her son had "never suffered from any mental illness or received treatment for any psychological or psychiatric problems." His mother said she had visited him eight or nine times but that it was becoming too hard emotionally to "see Jose that way." She added that he did not have facial ticks prior to being incarcerated.

"Mr. Padilla shows extreme anxiety," Ms. Zapf said at a pretrial hearing. "He said he will go back there. He will die there. He is fearful of his time in the brig. Everything that he talks about is with respect to the time at the brig, no other time point."

Jose Padilla timeline

1970 Born in Brooklyn, N.Y.

1974 His father dies; the family later moves to Chicago.

1980s ­ Several run-ins with the law, including gang involvement and convictions for battery and armed robbery. A robbery turns deadly after a friend stabs a victim. He enters a juvenile detention center and remains until age 18.

1989 ­ Moves to Florida with mother.

1991 ­ Serves 10 months in Broward County jail for firing a shot after a road-rage altercation. He becomes interested in Islam.

Mid-1990s ­ Employed with his girlfriend, Cherie Maria Stultz, at a Taco Bell managed by the cofounder of an Islamic school. Eventually, they both convert. He changes his name to Ibrahim. They marry.

1998 ­ Travels alone to Egypt to study Islam and Arabic with funds collected at his mosque. Eventually, he and Stultz file for divorce. He marries an Egyptian.

2000 ­ Visits Saudi Arabia for the hajj, then Yemen and Pakistan. The US Justice Department claims he meets with Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and attends a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

2002 ­ Reportedly talks with Al Qaeda leaders about a "dirty bomb" plot. On his return to US to see family, FBI agents arrest him in Chicago. President declares him an "enemy combatant" and he begins 43 months of detention and interrogation in a naval brig.

2003-2006 ­ Courts wrestle over whether the president has authority to order the military detention of a US citizen arrested on US soil. The administration indicts him in criminal court. The US Supreme Court dismisses a case challenging the legality of his military detention.

2007 Is tried in criminal court on terror conspiracy charges in Miami.

– Compiled by Leigh Montgomery
Sources: George Mason School of Law; FBI; court filings; news reports
Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0813/p01s03-usju.html

[StarmanSkye]

Almost everything about the arrest and treatment and trial of Padilla is a shocking, grotesque indictment of what American 'justice' has become under the criminal, morally repugnant policies of the Buish admin. and Defense Department. The Judge in this case likewise is a barbarous moron. Padilla is obviously a shattered man, brutalized by 43 months of solitary confinement and abhorant treatment. The Defense Dept.'s strenuous denials they don't 'do torture' while claiming Padilla's treatment must remain secret and defense psychiatrist's opinion Padilla has been rendered mentally ill are positively, awfully Orwellian.

--quote--
"But in a February hearing, US District Judge Marcia Cooke sidestepped the torture accusations. She ruled that even though mental-health experts had identified mental disabilities, Padilla was competent enough to face prosecution.

"The mere fact that the defendant is suffering from a mental disease or defect does not render the defendant incompetent to stand trial," Judge Cooke declared.

Mental-health experts say that a legal determination of competence to stand trial doesn't undercut the severity of Padilla's existing mental disabilities.
--end quote--

Padilla was originally detained under the claim he was involved in plotting a radiological 'dirty bomb' -- but evidently the case was too weak to try so Padilla is only being charged with having joined Al Qaeda in 2000 -- soon after the US had funded Al Qaeda fighters in the Balkans and Kosovo, and about the same time the US had been negotiating with the Taleban who they gave 43 million dollars to. While there hasn't been any public evidence to substantiate an Al Qaeda dirty bomb plot, the US has been effectively waging genocide with the use of Depleted Uranium ordinance --a weapon category specifically prohibited by the Geneva accords of which the US is a signatory to.

What has been done TO Padilla is so far worse than anything Padilla has actually done to ANYBODY that even considering the comparison is absurd.

If it wasn't so horrific it would be ludicrous.

Starman

[MacCruiskeen]

Remember the 'trial' of Zacarias Moussaoui?

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Moussaoui is remote-controlled

No, this is not a joke. But don't be too surprised if he eventually confesses to being responsible for global warming.

March 27th 2006: From outside the courtroom, NBC news reporter Pete Williams describes the day's proceedings to anchorman Dan Abrams:

WILLIAMS: The old outbursts were gone... He was very docile today... We believe that he's wearing one of those stun belts, and it may be that he was very worried about doing anything that would cause those Marshals to press the button....

ABRAMS: A stun belt? They literally have something around his waist? That they can push a button and...?

WILLIAMS: [Pause] Well...

http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/2006/03/mou ... olled.html

More here:

"I am learning the hard way that every word count in this life."

Like Oswald, he was trying to make it clear that he was a patsy. To no avail. The trial was an utter farce, as even the judge admitted:

Brinkema said, "In all the years I've been on the bench, I have never seen such an egregious violation of a rule on witnesses," and described the situation as a "significant error by the government affecting the... integrity of the criminal justice system of the United States in the context of a death case." However, days later, under significant media attention, Brinkema decided not to dismiss the case, and instead ruled that witnesses could not testify and the government would be allowed to continue to seek the death penalty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui

Moussaoui is now serving a life term in a federal maximum security prison, in Florence, Colorado.

As I said in a thread on the Pat Tillman case: the US is a post-legal society, and has been since 9/11. They got away with that, they can get away with anything.

[Jeff]

Verdict Reached in Padilla Terror Case

MIAMI - A verdict was reached Thursday in the trial of Jose Padilla and two co-defendants charged with supporting al-Qaida and other violent Islamic extremist groups overseas.

The jury verdict was scheduled to be read at 2 p.m. EDT before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami's downtown federal courthouse, according to an announcement from her chambers. The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about a day and a half following a three-month trial.

Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face possible life in prison if convicted of all three charges in the case.

...

link

[nomo]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... 16/1416242

EXCLUSIVE: An Inside Look at How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla

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In a Democracy Now! national broadcast exclusive, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty speaks for the first time about her experience interviewing Jose Padilla for 22 hours to determine the state of his mental health. Padilla is the U.S. citizen who was classified by President Bush as an enemy combatant and held in extreme isolation at a naval brig in South Carolina for over three-and-a-half years. His case is now before a Florida jury. "What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind," said Dr. Hegarty. "[Padilla's] personality was deconstructed and reformed." She said the effects of the extreme isolation on Padilla are consistent with brain damage. "I don't know if he's guilty or not of the charges that they brought against him," said Dr. Hegarty. "But, already - before he was ever found guilty - he's paid a tremendous price for his trip to the Middle East." [includes rush transcript] A jury began deliberations on Wednesday in Miami in the case of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man once accused by the Bush administration of plotting to set off a dirty bomb inside the United States.

The FBI initially arrested him in Chicago in 2002 after he got off a plane from Europe. For a month he was held as a material witness. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft made a dramatic announcement - the U.S. government had disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to set off nuclear dirty bombs inside the United States. At the center of the plot, Ashcroft alleged, was Padilla.

President Bush then classified Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, stripping him of all his rights. He was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in extreme isolation for forty three months.

The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over... He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live.

His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

Up until last year the Bush administration maintained it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever. But when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padila out of military custody to face criminal conspiracy charges.

On January 3, 2006 the government charged him and two others with criminal conspiracy. The government claims Padilla, along with his mentor, Adham Amin Hassoun, and Hassoun's colleague, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, conspired to commit murder abroad and to provide material support toward that goal.

Since May the men have been on trial in Miami. According to the Miami Herald, the overall case against Padilla is riddled with circumstantial evidence. Much of the case is built around an alleged form Padilla filled out to attend an al-Qaeda training camp.

Prosecutors have no introduced no evidence of personal involvement by Padilla in planning or carrying out any violent acts. There is no mention of Padilla - plotting to set off a dirty bomb. Despite this, prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Padilla.

Questions have also been raised about whether Padilla was mentally fit to stand trial. His lawyers and family say he has become clearly mentally ill after being held in isolation.

Today, we are joined by one of the few medical experts who has spent time with Padilla since his arrest five years ago. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty spent 22 hours interviewing Padilla last year to determine the state of his mental health. She concluded that Padilla lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense. Dr. Angela Hegarty is assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.

* Dr. Angela Hegarty, forensic psychiatrist who spent 22 hours interviewing Jose Padilla last year. She is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.

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JUAN GONZALEZ: A jury began deliberations on Wednesday in Miami in the case of Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born man accused by the Bush administration of plotting to set off a dirty bomb inside the United States. The FBI initially arrested him secretly in Chicago in 2002, after he got off a plane from Europe. For a month he was held as a material witness. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft made a dramatic announcement: the US government had disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to set off nuclear dirty bombs inside the United States. At the center of the plot, Ashcroft alleged, was Padilla.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush then classified Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, stripping him of all his rights. He was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina, where he was held in extreme isolation for forty-three months. The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over... He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

JUAN GONZALEZ: According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live. His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as sort of truth serums during his interrogations.

Up until last year, the Bush administration maintained that it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever, but when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padilla out of military custody to face criminal charges.

AMY GOODMAN: On January 3, 2006, the government charged him and two others with criminal conspiracy. The government claims Padilla, along with his mentor Adham Amin Hassoun and Hassoun’s colleague Kifah Wael Jayyousi, conspired to commit murder abroad and to provide material support toward that goal. Since May, the men have been on trial in Miami.

According to the Miami Herald, the overall case against Padilla is riddled with circumstantial evidence. Much of the case is built around an alleged form Padilla filled out to attend an al-Qaeda training camp. Prosecutors have introduced no evidence of personal involvement by Padilla in planning or carrying out any violent acts. There is no mention of Padilla plotting to set off a dirty bomb. Despite this, prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Padilla.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Questions have also been raised about whether Padilla was mentally fit to stand trial. His lawyers and family say he’s become clearly mentally ill after being held in isolation for so long.

Today, we’re joined by one of the few medical experts who has spent time with Padilla since his arrest five years ago. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty spent twenty-two hours interviewing Padilla last year to determine the state of his mental health. She concluded that he lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense. Dr. Angela Hegarty is assistant profession of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. She joins us today in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: And thank you for joining us for this first national interview, broadcast interview, that you are doing. How did you get involved in Jose Padilla's case?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, his attorneys called me up. For many years, I have worked -- I had an interest in working with religious fundamentalists of all stripes, actually. And over the years, I had worked with lawyers in Miami, as well as elsewhere in the country, and I guess they heard about me that way. And they called me up, because essentially he wasn't really talking to them, and it was clear to them that something was very wrong, but they didn't know quite what it was at this point. And the initial goal was for me to come down and see if I could help build a rapport with him, help him really begin to act, you know, with his lawyers to advocate for himself to help them defend his case. He wasn't doing that. And so, I came down to spend some time with him.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you find? Where did you first meet Jose Padilla?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, I first met Mr. Padilla in the Miami detention center, where he is held under special conditions in a conference room with a double mirror. And we spent twenty-two hours in that room together.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And how did he react to you initially, because obviously after being in isolation and then with -- he has not had a good relationship with his lawyers, as I understand, for quite a while, but how did he react to you?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, he really didn't want to talk to a psychiatrist at all. He didn’t want to be evaluated at all. He was incredibly anxious. I remember the first day, after about the first hour, he smiled for a moment and said, you know, this really isn't as bad as he thought it would be. He obviously was very, very anxious.

And in the course of the interview, he revealed to me that he essentially had been told that if he relayed any of what had happened to him, his experiences, people would quote/unquote “know he was crazy.” And he was very upset by this and very disturbed by it, and it’s just that his level of being so disturbed suggested to me that there was something more, but, you know, asking further questions, he wouldn't reveal it to me.

He was resentful of his lawyers. He had left the brig thinking he was about to be released. He told me that he had been given regular clothing and was actually surprised to find himself incarcerated. He was very angry at his lawyers that they hadn’t gotten him out and that, in fact, his conditions in the Miami detention center under the special conditions in which he was held were actually somewhat more restrictive and more isolating than they had been in the later stages of his detention at the brig. So he was angry with them. He also felt that everything had been established, you know, that the government knew everything and that essentially they would -- there was no need for him to be revealing things to his lawyers. And he was very uncomfortable.

AMY GOODMAN: What was the effect of over three-and-a-half years of isolation on Jose Padilla?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: I think there’s two things, really. Number one, his family, more than anything, and his friends, who had a chance to see him by the time I spoke with them, said he was changed. There was something wrong. There was something very “weird” -- was the word one of his siblings used -- something weird about him. There was something not right. He was a different man. And the second thing was his absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness, largely. It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like -- perhaps like a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he would, as I said earlier, he would subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened. So I think those would be the two main things.

Also he had developed, actually, a third thing. He 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.

JUAN GONZALEZ: In the affidavit you submitted to the court summarizing your examination of him, you also talk about the things he did say that happened to him, the sleeping on a steel bed with no mattress for all that time that he was isolated?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes. In the darkness or in the light -- in the cells, the light would be all dark for a long time or all light for a long time. And for a very long part of his detention he had no mattress at all. And sometimes he would try to sleep on the pallet, if you will, the hard steel pallet, or other times he would be in essentially stress positions where he's got shackles and a belt and is in an awkward and uncomfortable position for long periods at a time.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What other things did he say, tell you, were done to him?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, I think one of the things you have to realize is he was adamant that he would not reveal any quote/unquote “classified information.” He in fact refused to provide a narrative of his account. He essentially -- on the second day, after spending four hours on the Monday and we developed some rapport, on the second day I brought him in a list of materials and interrogation tactics that had been already -- you know, they were in the public record. And I asked him just merely to say yes or no to some of these things. And this included slapping, exposure to heat or cold for long periods of time, forcible showering. He was terrified, actually, about being taken to a thing called the “cage.” This was supposedly “recreation” -- I’d like to put that in quotes. He spoke about the lack of sleep, the relentless clicking and then banging of the doors of other cells that would wake him up.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that. Wasn't he alone in the Naval brig?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes, he was. In this very small cell, he was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and the doors were managed electronically. And between what Mr. Padilla told us and other sources, essentially it’s possible to open and close these doors electronically. And he would hear the click of the door opening, which is a loud click that sort of echoed, and then a very loud bang over and over and over again for hours at a time, possibly days. 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.

AMY GOODMAN: Did he recognize you when you returned the next day?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Oh, yes. Yes, he did. But he did have some memory problems, in that by about the fourth day, I asked him, “Can you just give me” -- he had been very clear that there was a particularly bad time, and then there was a somewhat better time, and then after he had access to counsel things improved somewhat. And he really was unable to give me any kind of -- beyond the most broadest brush strokes, he was unable to put anything in any kind of a chronological narrative at all. He was very, what we would call it in psychiatry, “concrete.” You would ask him, you know, how did you feel about something, or what have you, and he would generally resort to cliches. He seemed to have a great deal of difficulty recalling precise personal details about the interrogations or the experiences or particular incidents. He wouldn't know when they happened or how long they lasted, and so forth.

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.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and then we’re going to come back. We’re talking to Dr. Angela Hegarty, a forensic psychiatrist, spent twenty-two hours interviewing Jose Padilla last year, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. This is the first time she is speaking out on a national broadcast about her assessment of Jose Padilla. His case is now before a jury in Florida. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Dr. Angela Hegarty, forensic psychiatrist who spent more than twenty-two hours interviewing Jose Padilla last year. She’s an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. Jose Padilla's case is before a Florida jury right now. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, I’d like to ask you about some of the assessments by folks other than you in his case. I understand there was a Bureau of Prisons medical person who interviewed him and also concluded that he had mental problems, but that they really were not severe. And I think the judge, as well, in the case at one point acknowledged that he had some mental problems, but said that they should not be considered, the causes of them, as part of the process of the trial. Your sense of some of these other assessments?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Certainly. Well, first of all, there’s a big distinction between the diagnosis of a psychiatric or mental illness, on the one hand, and finding of legal incapacity to proceed with trial. That’s a legal term, and there are legal standards based on case law. And, of course, the judge relied on the legal standards and concluded that the defense had not met its burden in proving that he lacked capacity.

Now, of course, each interview that different people have is incredibly sensitive to a number of factors: the context, who the person is, their style, their interviewing techniques, their experience, and also, most importantly, who they are to the interviewee or the defendant, in this case. And, of course, from reading Dr. Buigas's report it’s clear that --

JUAN GONZALEZ: He’s from the Bureau of Prisons.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: That's right. It was clear that he saw perhaps a different side of the defendant. Perhaps the defendant, Mr. Padilla, reacted somewhat differently to him. He was a government doctor. Dr. Buigas actually interviewed him in his own office, whereas defense experts had to use this conference room with the double mirror. So the whole interview occurred in a very different context. And that’s why we have adversarial hearings, where one group of experts will go and put their case and then the other group of experts, and then the finder of fact or the judge, in this case, decides.

But, yes, he agreed that he did have some psychiatric or psychological problems, but that they weren't as severe as those the defense had seen. Part of the problem, though, with that -- and I want to add this -- is that Mr. Padilla was really very reluctant to cooperate. In fact, he refused to finish the psychological testing that I was administering and also what Dr. Zapf administered, because -- so essentially he wasn't exactly the easiest person to elicit the kind of clinical information we need.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the findings that he was, well, the equivalent, after his experience of three-and-a-half years in severe isolation and what happened to him during that period, of brain-damaged?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, during my time with him, some of his reasoning seemed somewhat impaired, some of his thinking seemed impaired, his memory certainly, his ability to pay attention seemed very impaired. I developed a differential diagnosis from this: severe anxiety. Post-traumatic stress disorder can do that. But also, we know from really basic neuroscience studies that extreme isolation for prolonged periods of time -- and I’m talking, you know, the studies are on maybe days or weeks, and he had extreme isolation for years -- really do, in fact, impair higher brain function. And I recommended that we get some neuropsychological testing. And, unfortunately, he wasn't able to fully cooperate with that. However, the testing we did do was consistent with brain damage, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Brain damage.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And have you dealt with someone who had been in isolation for such a long period of time before?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: No. 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.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’m thinking -- at one point in your affidavit, you talk about how he said that he felt at one point that a huge weight was crushing down on his chest. Did he --

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Explain that a little bit.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, he thought he was having a heart attack, and he’s a young, healthy man. Now, one possibility is, yes, he was having a heart attack. Certainly with the kind of adrenaline that would be surging through his body, whether from what we call internal stimuli -- hallucinations, panic, paranoia, and so forth -- or as a result of what else was going on, it’s not unreasonable. However, more likely, he also felt his life was slipping away, he was going to die, and this actually is almost a textbook description of a major panic attack, which, if anybody has had one, the word “panic” doesn't quite capture how terrible it is. You really feel like you’re dying.

And so, his perceptions of what was happening to him and himself, which is one of the most terrifying aspects, was really difficult to assess. For example, he reported very clearly that he had been given mind-altering drugs. And again, that is realistically, unfortunately, one serious hypothesis. However, another serious hypothesis --

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean? Given by who?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: By the government.

AMY GOODMAN: Drugged.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Drugged, yes. And clearly he had some terrible frightening experience to which he attributed these drugs. However, again, his -- given what sensory deprivation and isolation of this scale does, it’s also entirely possible that he wasn't given drugs, and it’s just the psychiatric effects of the isolation and the sensory deprivation, because the hallucinations can be incredibly vivid. People feel like they’re losing their minds, that they’re coming apart. It’s absolutely terrifying.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re interviewing Dr. Angela Hegarty, who is a forensic psychiatrist who saw Jose Padilla for more than twenty-two hours. The new Army Field Manual bars the use of isolation to achieve psychological disorientation through sensory deprivation. The manual states, “Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, as well as bizarre thoughts, depression, anti-social behavior. Detainees will not be subject to sensory deprivation.” But you say he was.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Without question.

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.

And essentially, like many abuse victims, whether it’s torture survivors or battered women or even children who are abused by parents, as long as the parents or the abuser is in control in their minds, essentially they identify with the primary aims of the abuser. And all abusers, whoever they are, have one absolute requirement, and that is that you keep their secret. I mean, it’s common knowledge that people who abuse children or women will say, “Look at what you made me do,” putting the blame on the victim, trying to instill guilt. “People will judge you. People will think you’re crazy if you tell them about this. You will be an enemy. You will be seen as an enemy. You will be seen as a bad person if this comes out. There will be dire and terrible consequences, not only for you.” Jose was very, very concerned that if torture allegations were made on his behalf, that somehow it would it interfere with the government's ability to detain people at Guantanamo, and this was something he couldn't sign onto. He was very identified with the goals of the government.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Did he talk at all with you about his family and his concerns about what might happen to his family?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes. Essentially, when Mr. Padilla would talk about emotionally meaningful events or feelings, it would always be almost by accident. And he worried that his mother would be -- her life would be somehow derailed by this. He told people that his family had been threatened. His family was terrified. So, again, always the tip of the iceberg with Mr. Padilla. He was very afraid for his family.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Jacoby statement, declaration, and why the Bush administration did not want him to see attorneys?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, there was a quote in the Jacoby declaration that caught my attention as a forensic psychiatrist. And that -- essentially it says that the purpose of keeping Mr. Padilla isolated was to foster a sense of dependence on his interrogators and to essentially foreclose in his mind utterly any hope of rescue. And it makes reference to the fact that, given that people who have had contact with the criminal justice system will expect to see an attorney and be rescued by an attorney, they want to essentially disabuse him of the notion that he will ever be rescued. They want him to believe that he is in their power forever. And I believe, in a sense, they succeeded.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What does all of this do to our notions or expectation of how the criminal justice system is supposed to operate in this country?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, essentially, based on the Jacoby memorandum, it’s -- you know, almost it’s a cultural cliche. You know, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney. Essentially, what happened to Mr. Padilla was designed to reassure him that this was not in fact the case. The things we take for granted as American citizens, that we will not get off a plane and be spirited away for years at the hands of harsh interrogators, that that can happen in America.

And as a citizen myself, I find it very disturbing, especially in the light of the mistakes that have been made over the years. I recall a case of an attorney who was misidentified from the West Coast, and he had had a very tough experience as a result. And so, the possibility that an innocent -- that this could happen to an innocent person, a person perhaps who is merely known to somebody who themselves perhaps are being tortured -- you know, their name might come up in such a circumstance -- could actually be spirited away and entirely deprived of their human rights, their rights as human beings, their ordinary dignity, is disturbing.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Angela Hegarty, we are headed to San Francisco today. Today, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, Monday is the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. You’re a psychiatrist. But that’s the group of 150,000 psychologists. And they are having a showdown right now. A vote will happen on Sunday, whether the APA will take a position against the involvement of its members, of psychologists, in coercive interrogations, in, what many psychologists are saying, torture. There is a massive protest taking place tomorrow at 4:00 outside the Moscone Center. There will be a track of debates inside the conference. Unfortunately, we wanted to record these debates, and the APA is now saying that there will be no video recording of discussions between the psychologists, public discussions, where military psychologists debate others around the issue of whether psychologists should be involved in these interrogations. What are your thoughts? And what position has your organization, the American Psychiatric Association, taken?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, the American Psychiatric Association principles of ethics essentially follow the AMA’s, which is --

AMY GOODMAN: American Medical Association.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: American Medical Association, yes -- is, no psychiatrist is involved in torture ever under any circumstances. Period. Torture -- there is no caveat that opens up the possibility by mentioning the Bush administration's qualifications on the definition of “torture.”

That the psychologists are protesting and debating this is great news. Clinicians -- our entire professional identity is clinicians. And if psychologists -- psychologists certainly see themselves as clinicians, people who care for people. Our entire professional identity as people who help people is obviated by such involvement. And I entirely disagree with any caveat that would allow a clinician to be involved in torture at any time.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the argument that those who don't want the moratorium are making, and especially high-level staff of the American Psychological Association, that for psychologists to be there is to bring ethics to the situation, to explain what is going too far?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, you know, I asked Mr. Padilla about that. He’d said that there were some decent people that he had come in contact with, you know, over the -- especially in the latter part of his stay at the brig. And I asked him, I said, “You know, if I were in a situation like this as a clinician and I abhor what’s being done to you, would you want me to stay, knowing that there’s somebody who cares about you, who’s ideally, hopefully, ethical? Or would you -- albeit powerless -- or would you want me to leave?” And he actually gave me one of the first and only immediate and straightforward and direct answers: he would want me to leave. He would not want me there, because for him my presence endorses what’s going on, even though, as I said, in my scenario I would be powerless to do anything to change it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And did he talk about having interactions with medical people, either doctors, psychiatrists or psychologists, while in custody?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: No, he just mentioned staff, in general. He had some interactions with some kind of clinical staff around medication and evaluations, but it’s unclear to me what their credentials were.

AMY GOODMAN: So you don't know if psychiatrists or psychologists were involved.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Oh, I know that some mental health professionals were involved, but -- by the way this was designed -- the sensory deprivation, especially, the leaving and taking of stimuli from his environment. For example, there was a mirror that was there, and then that was taken away abruptly, or he’d have a pillow or a sheet or something that made him a little more comfortable, and that would be taken away. 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.

AMY GOODMAN: After having met with him for twenty-two hours, as we wrap up, Dr. Hegarty, your conclusions about his case, Jose Padilla’s case, as it stands now before a jury in a Florida court?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: You know, I don't know if he’s guilty or not of the charges that they brought against him, but he has certainly paid -- already, before he was ever found guilty, he has already paid a tremendous price for his trip to the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Angela Hegarty, forensic psychiatrist, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, one of the forensic psychiatrists who met Jose Padilla, one of the very few, speaking out now for the first time. Twenty-two hours she interviewed him.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877.

[Jeff]

Verdict: Guilty

Jose Padilla Convicted by U.S. Jury in Terror Case

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Jose Padilla was convicted of terrorism-conspiracy charges in a victory for the Bush administration, which held him in a military prison as an enemy combatant for more than three years.

Padilla, 36, a U.S. citizen, and two co-defendants were found guilty today by a federal jury in Miami of conspiring to commit murder in a foreign country, conspiring to provide support to terrorist groups and providing such support. They could be sentenced to as much as life in prison. An earlier accusation that Padilla plotted to explode a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' wasn't included in the charges.

``We can appeal,'' Padilla's mother, Estelle Lebron, told reporters. ``I don't know how they could find him guilty. There were 300,000 calls and there's no evidence he spoke in code'' in the phone calls recorded by investigators. ``George Bush won today,'' she said.

Padilla's conviction after a three-month trial gives a boost to President George W. Bush's war on terrorism following a series of setbacks in U.S. courts. In three cases since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Supreme Court has put limits on presidential power to determine the fate of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The high court will hear another case later this year.

Padilla's two co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, were convicted of the same charges. The seven-man, five-woman jury deliberated for a day and a half. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke scheduled sentencing for Dec. 5.

...

link

[Gouda]

[url=http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/Monsters_Among_Us%3A_Living_in_a_Torture_State/]"We are all Jose Padilla now."

-- Chris Floyd[/url]

...And we should have been right from the beginning.

[Doodad]

the cynic in me wonders if he really had a "mind" to begin with given his actions during current circumstances. I know that's not real PC to say but heck, I had to say it. After all, reality does include a smidgeon of cause and effect.