It Did Happen Here: American Citizen Tortured, Convicted of Thought Crime

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9503

It Did Happen Here: American Citizen Tortured, Convicted of Thought Crime
by Ted Rall | Aug 23 2007


"Just about everyone agrees that the recent conviction of Abdullah al-Muhajir, a.k.a. Jose Padilla, is a good thing," wrote right-wing pundit Neil Kressel in The New York Post. Indeed, just about everyone did. "It is hard to disagree with the jury's guilty verdict against Jose Padilla, the accused, but never formally charged, dirty bomber," opined the liberal editorial board of The New York Times. (They went on to criticize the way the Bush Administration denied Padilla due process.)

Meet Mr. Not Everyone.

Padilla, a 36-year-old American citizen born in Brooklyn who converted to Islam, was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport in May 2002. Using the bombastic "1984"-style rhetoric of the post-9/11 era, then-attorney general John Ashcroft announced that Padilla had participated in an "unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb." Padilla's arrest, Ashcroft ranted, would have caused "mass death and injury" in an American city.

But there wasn't any evidence. Or there wasn't enough to convict him in court. Which was, under the system of justice citizens of Western countries have lived under for eight centuries, the same thing.

Before 9/11 and "preventative detention" and legal torture and scary new laws like the USA-Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act eliminated habeas corpus, Padilla would have sat in jail a day or two. He might have gotten roughed up. Then he'd have walked.

That was under democracy. In Bush's neofascist security state, Padilla rotted in solitary confinement--in a military brig--for three and a half years. (Read Henry Charriere's classic prison memoir "Papillon" if you doubt that solitary confinement is a form of torture.) No family visits. No lawyer. They subjected him to sensory deprivation, covering his eyes and ears to make him lose his mind.

And still no trial. Because the government knew Padilla was innocent.

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9503

[marmar]

1. He really could be any of us.....

How long before anti-war activists, or bloggers, or whomever are accused of "aiding terrorists" by expressing their anti-Bush administration thoughts? And Bush's little executive order, and the expanded spying powers, give him the ability to do so.

[babylonsister]

4. Scary, isn't it. Disheartening, too. nt

[Hydra]

8. Want a bigger scary to think about?

Stalin used his system of "justice" to round up people to be slave labor. Sure, he had his lists of possible problem children, but scarier is that he had lists of random people that included people that passively supported him.

The fact that you don't have to do anything to end up like Padilla is the true Pandora's box. Compliance with the rules and even the accepted policies does not guarantee you safety anymore.

[tblue37]

9. And if they are isolated and tortured, without benefit of counsel,

disappeared into a black hole where no one can contact them or hear their pleas, it will be easy enough for the administration to force them to confess to anything they want them to admit to.

This is tyranny, pure and simple.

[hobbit709]

2. Read this book excerpt on line

Rape Of The Mind by Joost A. M. Merloo MD
http://www.ninehundred.net/control/
Tells all about the techniques of brainwashing, etc. Talks about how the Nazis and Soviets did this but the procedures are eerily familiar to what's going on now.

CHAPTER ONE -- YOU TOO WOULD CONFESS

A fantastic thing is happening in our world. Today a man is no longer punished only for the crimes he has in fact committed. Now he may be compelled to confess to crimes that have been conjured up by his judges, who use his confession for political purposes. It is not enough for us to damn as evil those who sit in judgment. We must understand what impels the false admission of guilt; we must take another look at the human mind in all its frailty and vulnerability.
After his repatriation, Colonel Schwable issued a sworn statement repudiating his confession, and describing his long months of imprisonment. Later, he was brought before a military court of inquiry. He testified in his own defense before that court: "I was never convinced in my own mind that we in the First Marine Air Wing had used bug warfare. I knew we hadn't, but the rest of it was real to me the conferences, the planes, and how they would go about their missions."

"The words were mine," the Colonel continued, "but the thoughts were theirs. That is the hardest thing I have to explain: how a man can sit down and write something he knows is false, and yet, to sense it, to feel it, to make it seem real."

This is the way Dr. Charles W. Mayo, a leading American physician and government representative, explained brainwashig in an official statement before the United Nations: "...the tortures used...although they include many brutal physical injuries, are not like the medieval torture of the rack and the thumb screw. They are subtler, more prolonged, and intended to be more terrible in their effect. They are calculated to disintegrate the mind of an intelligent victim, to distort his sense of values, to a point where he will not simply cry out 'I did it!' but will become a seemingly willing accomplice to the complete disintegration of his integrity and the production of an elaborate fiction."

Lots more there.

[Dhalgren]

3. I agree. The Padilla kidnapping, detention, torture, "trial", and conviction

is an ugly crime - not only against Mr. al-Muhajir, but against the US Constitution and the American people. This case ranks up right along side any of the heinous human rights abuses of the Nazis and the Stalinists and the Maoists. This is a national shame...

[formercia]

5. Padilla was made the Scarecrow.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/formercia/75

formercia's Journal
The Scarecrow
Posted by formercia in General Discussion
Tue Aug 14th 2007, 10:54 AM
During the Holy Inquisition, many Jews who would not renounce their faith and 'heretics' were often crucified and left to rot at the approaches to cities as a warning to others what waited for them within, thus the origin of the garden scarecrow.

It would have been very simple for those in power to dispose of Leonard Peltier in some unmarked grave, disappeared. There are dozens of such graves on or near Pine Ridge, of Native Americans and non tribal members who tried to help those besieged at Wounded Knee.

Leonard Peltier rots in prison as a warning to others as to what awaits them if they cross the boys. No one dares pardon him because they know what fate awaits anyone who does.

[pingzing58]

6. We need a democrat president not from the DLC.

[formercia]

11. Or the CFR. n/t

[libodem]

7. Brain washing

I haven't heard that term for a long time, yet to be sure, that is exactly what were did to Jose Padilla. Made him loose his mind. That should be punishment enough. What could be worse than to be left a mere shell of your former being? Death would be less cruel but it's not the fear invoking deterrent that knowing the United States Government can grab you and leave you a mindless zombie. If the Geneva conventions is ever up dated from the 'quaint' old instruction guide it once was, they need to include a hand gun for the prisoner to commit suicide rather than sustain the loneliness of solitude of torture, if they want a way out. After all something humanitarian need to be added. I can slightly understand how a mind could slip under sensory deprivation. When I took a long meditation course, the long hours of meditation during the day made kind of an altered state which made my sleep state 'different'. It was like being semi-awake watching my dreams. I can vaguely understand not being able to distinguish after awhile sleep states/dreaming and wakefulness. Hallucinations would be sure to follow. How terrifying. The Agents and Servicemen that have participated in this will have to live with themselves for the rest of their lives. I hope they have consciences!

[libodem]

10. This is important information

and I hope none of us ever forgets what this administration has done. The stuff these three men were doing took place well before 9/11 before it became a 'thought crime' to assist with charity. These guys were assisting Muslims in conflict zones such as Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Lebanon back in 1998. The wiretaps accused them of speaking in 'code'. Kifah Jayousi was a civil engineer and a public school administrator, a naturalized citizen from Jordan. The aide organization was called World Wide Relief, and they published a newsletter called the Islam Report. Hardly a 'secret cell'. Just remember NO good deed goes unpunished. I think the FBI and the CiA, and Homeland Security were just that desperate to scare up any one with ties out side of the country.