Amy Goodman: How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla

[marmar]

from Democracy Now!, via AlterNet:


How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted August 17, 2007.



Jose Padilla has been found guilty in court and faces possible life in prison, but forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty explains after interviewing him that Padilla already paid the ultimate price through torture -- he's lost his mind.

On Thursday, the jury in the Jose Padilla terror trial has found the American citizen guilty of conspiracy to support Islamic terrorism overseas. His sentencing is set for December 5 and he faces possible life in prison.

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. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/59958/

[rodeodance]

1. He is a US citizen. This potentially could happen to anyone of us.

[rodeodance]

2. Everybody should read and send to your congresscritters!

[groovedaddy]

3. Does citizenship have any meaning now?

It is left to us - we, the people - to stand up for our rights in the face of a fascist onslaught.

[ThomCat]

6. No. Only the wealthy, and those with Republican connections

are really citizens now. The rest of us are only conditional citizens. What they can do to any one person, they can do to others. They will target liberals. x(

[0007]

4. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of "Democracy Now" on Link tv

and Free Speech tv interviewed Dr. Hegarty on the mental stability of Jose Padilla. Such an interview one would never ever see on MSM. We have a gutless media and a criminal administration.

[Poll_Blind]

5. k&r!n/t

PB

[MasonJar]

7. I am sorry, but a citizen who has been completely destroyed mentally

should not be standing trial for anything. How can he now speak for himself if he is totally mindless? How can the illegal wiretapping testimony be evidence? How does the government know what the coded messages really meant? This trial is a travesty of justice. If the government had tried him in a speedy manner with benefit of counsel as is required by the Contitution and the Bill of Rights and he had been found guilty, then I would congratulate them. This, however, is unconscionable; it is tyranny and illegitimate.

[Turner Ashby]

8. While Jefferson was speaking of the Alien and Sedition Acts,

his forceful words in The Kentucky Resolutions are still powerful today. It is unfortunate that our Congress stands by as spineless creatures.