Fraser Macleod
10-Dec-06, 20:44
This is copied directly from the 'Sunday Times News Review' the article was written by a man named Andrew Sullivan:
Jose Padilla was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1970, the son of Puerto Rican immigrants. He was a troubled youth, joining a street gang when the family moved to Chicago, and was once jailed for aggravated assault. After serving his sentence, he converted to Islam and professed non-violence. He went to the Masjid Al-Iman mosque in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and worked for a charity suspected of Islamist terror ties. He visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
Returning to Chicago on May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested and held under a warrant related to the 9/11 attacks. A month later, as a court was about to rule on whether there was any evidence to merit his detention, President George W Bush declared Padilla an “enemy combatant” and he was sent to a military brig in South Carolina. No charges were brought against him for 3½ years.
The basic principle of Anglo-American liberty for several hundred years has been habeas corpus — the notion that the government cannot detain a citizen without charging him with crimes that can be brought before a court and a jury of his peers. It is the keystone of any notion of a free society. For the first time in the history of the United States, it has been indefinitely suspended, and Padilla is the proof.
Padilla was not charged for three years, but he was accused. He was accused by government sources of being part of a plot to detonate a dirty bomb in an American city; he was accused by talk radio of being John Doe No 2 in the Oklahoma City bombing; and he was accused of plotting terrorist acts in the US.
After three years in solitary confinement, the Bush administration feared its detention of Padilla might be struck down by a court, and so it finally decided to charge him with a crime. The charges it brought in November 2005 included no mention of any dirty bomb, no link to Al-Qaeda, and no charge of conspiracy to commit acts of terror in America. A judge threw out other charges. None of the charges that remain involve actual terrorist activity, just of being connected to a group that may have financed such activity in Bosnia and Chechnya.
So Padilla, an American citizen, was detained without being charged for 3½ years. It was nearly two years before he had access to a lawyer.
This is what Padilla’s lawyer claims was done to Padilla in the custody of President Bush: “Mr Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell.
“Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr Padilla was denied even the smallest and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors . . .
“He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long periods.
“He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios and documents to further disorientate him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake and otherwise assault Mr Padilla.”
As a consequence of this, his legal team now says he is mentally unfit to stand trial. One person who recently interviewed him said the following: “During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body. The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel.”
To put it bluntly: he has been sent mad. Last week, new photographs surfaced of the way in which Padilla has been treated. He needed to be escorted from his cell to get root canal treatment. Padilla has never exhibited any violent behaviour in detention of any kind, according to his jailers. Yet he was manacled head-to-toe, he was barefoot, and given blackout goggles so he could see no light and soundproof ear-muffs so he could hear nothing. He was escorted by three soldiers in full riot gear, visors and weapons. Suddenly, you get a glimpse of the sadism inflicted on him for three years of total isolation.
Could this still happen? Yes, it could. In fact, if another American citizen were today to be arrested by the president, and declared an enemy combatant, he would be barred from any recourse to the federal courts. The Military Commissions Act — passed in the last week of the outgoing Congress before the recent elections — stripped the courts of any jurisdiction over new military commissions set up to try and convict American citizens.
Here’s the language: “Notwithstanding any other law (including section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, or any other habeas corpus provision), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever, including any action pending on or filed after the date of enactment of this chapter, relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission convened under this section, including challenges to the lawfulness of the procedures of military commissions under this chapter.”
So habeas corpus is over in America. The president can now detain any citizen he so designates, remove him from the judicial system and subject him to a military commission, with much weaker rules than a civilian court. Torture is formally banned, but torture techniques such as waterboarding are still at the president’s discretion.
More than two centuries after the construction of the US constitution, almost eight centuries since Magna Carta, Americans are at the mercy of a new king, who can jail without charges and torture at will.
The rationale? A war that has no definable end. The constitution itself declares that habeas corpus is inviolate except in cases of invasion or rebellion. But under this president, the constitution no longer applies. You want proof? Remember Jose Padilla. No one in Washington has.
I have an ongoing argument with an acquaintance who believes I’ far to cynical for a 15 year old, however does this article not prove what the world has degenerated to and ultimately become? It exemplifies the most haunting manifestation of the moral that power corrupts; America is undisputedly the most powerful nation on the face of the earth, it is a nation that claims to exhibit nothing but unrelenting freedom. People claim that Mr. Saddam Hussein should be strung up, hung drawn and summarily quartered for crimes like torture of Kurdish prisoners; people claim Stalin was a vicious and cruel dictator who ordered his own people murdered. And this is all true, Saddam is an abhorrent dictator and Stalin was in a word evil, but how is what they have done any different from what other governments do? (Notice I’ve moved away from America specifically, mainly because my naïvety dose not stretch far enough to exert the belief that this only happens in the 'land of the free'.) People sit in there quaint British homes wondering why young Muslims could possibly believe the western world to be evil and y they cannot see the treatment of people in the middle east in places like Saudi-Arabia. But then the western world is not separated from the 3rd world by a lack of violence and an expanded moral understanding its only fundamental difference is the wealth of economy. I can audibly hear people gasping at my accusations of the friendly, PC, non-torturing, harmonic Western world being nothing but evil (this is starting to sound like lord of the flies :lol:), I’m not strictly telling you that everyone is a murderous, sadistic extremist (although given the right circumstances...lol thank you William Golding for that one) I am however trying to point out that the treatment of Jose Padilla makes obvious the fact that almost all world governments are corrupt in some way shape or form and whilst that does not shock me it does make me wonder if perhaps investing so much power in so few people is a good idea (a bit of Marx there lol)
Anyway, i had no intention of making a point, it formulated itself (honest), the original purpose was to communicate the horrendous treatment of Jose Padilla to you, feel free to discuss
Ciao Fraser
Jose Padilla was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1970, the son of Puerto Rican immigrants. He was a troubled youth, joining a street gang when the family moved to Chicago, and was once jailed for aggravated assault. After serving his sentence, he converted to Islam and professed non-violence. He went to the Masjid Al-Iman mosque in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and worked for a charity suspected of Islamist terror ties. He visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
Returning to Chicago on May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested and held under a warrant related to the 9/11 attacks. A month later, as a court was about to rule on whether there was any evidence to merit his detention, President George W Bush declared Padilla an “enemy combatant” and he was sent to a military brig in South Carolina. No charges were brought against him for 3½ years.
The basic principle of Anglo-American liberty for several hundred years has been habeas corpus — the notion that the government cannot detain a citizen without charging him with crimes that can be brought before a court and a jury of his peers. It is the keystone of any notion of a free society. For the first time in the history of the United States, it has been indefinitely suspended, and Padilla is the proof.
Padilla was not charged for three years, but he was accused. He was accused by government sources of being part of a plot to detonate a dirty bomb in an American city; he was accused by talk radio of being John Doe No 2 in the Oklahoma City bombing; and he was accused of plotting terrorist acts in the US.
After three years in solitary confinement, the Bush administration feared its detention of Padilla might be struck down by a court, and so it finally decided to charge him with a crime. The charges it brought in November 2005 included no mention of any dirty bomb, no link to Al-Qaeda, and no charge of conspiracy to commit acts of terror in America. A judge threw out other charges. None of the charges that remain involve actual terrorist activity, just of being connected to a group that may have financed such activity in Bosnia and Chechnya.
So Padilla, an American citizen, was detained without being charged for 3½ years. It was nearly two years before he had access to a lawyer.
This is what Padilla’s lawyer claims was done to Padilla in the custody of President Bush: “Mr Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell.
“Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time. Mr Padilla was denied even the smallest and most personal shreds of human dignity by being deprived of showering for weeks at a time, yet having to endure forced grooming at the whim of his captors . . .
“He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long periods.
“He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios and documents to further disorientate him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake and otherwise assault Mr Padilla.”
As a consequence of this, his legal team now says he is mentally unfit to stand trial. One person who recently interviewed him said the following: “During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body. The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel.”
To put it bluntly: he has been sent mad. Last week, new photographs surfaced of the way in which Padilla has been treated. He needed to be escorted from his cell to get root canal treatment. Padilla has never exhibited any violent behaviour in detention of any kind, according to his jailers. Yet he was manacled head-to-toe, he was barefoot, and given blackout goggles so he could see no light and soundproof ear-muffs so he could hear nothing. He was escorted by three soldiers in full riot gear, visors and weapons. Suddenly, you get a glimpse of the sadism inflicted on him for three years of total isolation.
Could this still happen? Yes, it could. In fact, if another American citizen were today to be arrested by the president, and declared an enemy combatant, he would be barred from any recourse to the federal courts. The Military Commissions Act — passed in the last week of the outgoing Congress before the recent elections — stripped the courts of any jurisdiction over new military commissions set up to try and convict American citizens.
Here’s the language: “Notwithstanding any other law (including section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, or any other habeas corpus provision), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever, including any action pending on or filed after the date of enactment of this chapter, relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission convened under this section, including challenges to the lawfulness of the procedures of military commissions under this chapter.”
So habeas corpus is over in America. The president can now detain any citizen he so designates, remove him from the judicial system and subject him to a military commission, with much weaker rules than a civilian court. Torture is formally banned, but torture techniques such as waterboarding are still at the president’s discretion.
More than two centuries after the construction of the US constitution, almost eight centuries since Magna Carta, Americans are at the mercy of a new king, who can jail without charges and torture at will.
The rationale? A war that has no definable end. The constitution itself declares that habeas corpus is inviolate except in cases of invasion or rebellion. But under this president, the constitution no longer applies. You want proof? Remember Jose Padilla. No one in Washington has.
I have an ongoing argument with an acquaintance who believes I’ far to cynical for a 15 year old, however does this article not prove what the world has degenerated to and ultimately become? It exemplifies the most haunting manifestation of the moral that power corrupts; America is undisputedly the most powerful nation on the face of the earth, it is a nation that claims to exhibit nothing but unrelenting freedom. People claim that Mr. Saddam Hussein should be strung up, hung drawn and summarily quartered for crimes like torture of Kurdish prisoners; people claim Stalin was a vicious and cruel dictator who ordered his own people murdered. And this is all true, Saddam is an abhorrent dictator and Stalin was in a word evil, but how is what they have done any different from what other governments do? (Notice I’ve moved away from America specifically, mainly because my naïvety dose not stretch far enough to exert the belief that this only happens in the 'land of the free'.) People sit in there quaint British homes wondering why young Muslims could possibly believe the western world to be evil and y they cannot see the treatment of people in the middle east in places like Saudi-Arabia. But then the western world is not separated from the 3rd world by a lack of violence and an expanded moral understanding its only fundamental difference is the wealth of economy. I can audibly hear people gasping at my accusations of the friendly, PC, non-torturing, harmonic Western world being nothing but evil (this is starting to sound like lord of the flies :lol:), I’m not strictly telling you that everyone is a murderous, sadistic extremist (although given the right circumstances...lol thank you William Golding for that one) I am however trying to point out that the treatment of Jose Padilla makes obvious the fact that almost all world governments are corrupt in some way shape or form and whilst that does not shock me it does make me wonder if perhaps investing so much power in so few people is a good idea (a bit of Marx there lol)
Anyway, i had no intention of making a point, it formulated itself (honest), the original purpose was to communicate the horrendous treatment of Jose Padilla to you, feel free to discuss
Ciao Fraser