|
Why Jose Padilla's 17-Year Prison Sentence Should
Shock and Disgust all Americans
By Andy Worthington
23/01/08 "Huffington Post" -- - The news that US citizen
Jose Padilla has received a prison sentence of 17 years and four
months should provoke outrage in the United States, although it
is unlikely that there will be much more than a whimper of
dissent.
The former gang member and convert to Islam - whose arrest in
May 2002 was trumpeted by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft as
that of a "known terrorist," who was "exploring a plan" to
detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a US city - was once
regarded as one of the most dangerous terrorists ever
apprehended on American soil. Almost six years later, as he
received his sentence, he was not actually accused of lifting a
finger to harm even a single US citizen.
While this is shocking enough in and of itself, Padilla's
sentence - in what at least one perceptive commentator called
"the most important case of our lifetimes" - is particularly
shocking because it sends a clear message to the president of
the United States that he can, if he wishes (and as he did with
Padilla), designate a US citizen as an "enemy combatant," hold
him without charge or trial in a naval brig for 43 months, and
torture him - through the use of prolonged sensory deprivation
and solitary confinement - to such an extent that, as the
psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty explained after spending 22
hours with Padilla, "What happened at the brig was essentially
the destruction of a human being's mind."
Padilla's warders had another take on his condition, describing
him as "so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for 'a
piece of furniture,'" but the most detailed analysis of the
effects of his torture was, again, provided by Angela Hegarty in
an interview last August with Democracy Now:
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.
As if this were not worrying enough, it was what happened after
Padilla's 43-month ordeal that sealed the president's impunity
to torture US citizens at will. When it seemed that his case was
within reach of the US Supreme Court, the government transferred
him into the US legal system, deposited him in a normal prison
environment, dropped all mention of the "dirty bomb" plot, and
charged him, based on his association with two alleged terrorist
facilitators, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, with
participating in a Florida-based plot to aid Islamic extremists
in holy wars abroad. When the case came to court last summer,
the judge, Marcia Cooke, airbrushed Padilla's torture from
history, insisting that it could not be discussed at all, and,
after a trial regarded as farcical by many observers, Padilla
and his co-defendants were duly found guilty.
Today's sentencing, after an unusually protracted two-week
debate, has apparently brought the whole sordid saga to an end,
with Padilla's torture only mentioned briefly in passing by
Judge Cooke, who noted, "I do find that the conditions [for
Padilla as an enemy combatant] were so harsh that they warrant
consideration." Nevertheless, he received a longer sentence than
either of his co-defendants (who were sentenced to 15 years and
eight months, and 12 years and eight months, respectively), even
though two jurors admitted to the Miami Herald that the jury as
a whole "struggled to convict Padilla because the panel
initially viewed him as a bit player in the scheme to aid
Islamic extremists, unlike his co-defendants."
They certainly had a point. While the conviction of Hassoun and
Jayyousi was based on coded conversations in 126 phone calls
intercepted by the FBI over a number of years, Padilla was
included in only seven of those phone calls. Groomed by his
mentor, Hassoun, he had traveled to the Middle East and, in
2000, had applied to attend a military training camp in
Afghanistan, using the name Abu Abdallah al-Muhajir. His
application form, which, according to a government expert, bore
his fingerprints, was apparently discovered during a CIA raid on
an alleged al-Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan, but although the
prosecution presented an alleged al-Qaeda graduation list with
his Muslim name on it during the sentencing, they had been
unable to provide any evidence during the trial that he had
actually attended the training camp in Afghanistan.
In the end, Padilla's conviction hinged on the jury's
determination that he had "joined the terrorism conspiracy in
the United States before leaving the country." This was based on
a single recorded conversation, in July 1997, in which he stated
that he was ready to join a jihad overseas.
17 years and four months seems to me to be an extraordinarily
long sentence for little more than a thought crime, but when the
issue of Padilla's three and half years of suppressed torture is
raised, it's difficult not to conclude that justice has just
been horribly twisted, that the president and his advisors have
just got away with torturing an American citizen with impunity,
and that no American citizen can be sure that what happened to
Padilla will not happen to him or her. Today, it was a Muslim;
tomorrow, unless the government's powers are taken away from
them, it could be any number of categories of "enemy combatants"
who have not yet been identified.
For more on Jose Padilla and other US "enemy combatants," see
my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees
in America's Illegal Prison.
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments
Comment Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We encourage engaging, diverse
and meaningful commentary. Do not include
personal information such as names, addresses,
phone numbers and emails. Comments falling
outside our guidelines – those including
personal attacks and profanity – are not
permitted.
See our complete
Comment Policy
and
use this link to notify us if you have concerns
about a comment.
We’ll promptly review and remove any
inappropriate postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
