Video
Reveals US Torture Of
“Enemy Combatant” José Padilla
By Tom Carter
06 December 2006
World
Socialist Web
Lawyers
for José Padilla, the Brooklyn-born man imprisoned and tortured
for almost four years by the Bush administration, have released to the
media still frames from a video taken during one episode in the course
of his captivity in a South Carolina Naval brig.
In June 2002, the Bush administration
alleged that Padilla, an American citizen, was an Al Qaeda operative
who was planning to manufacture and detonate a radioactive “dirty
bomb” in the US. Bush declared Padilla an “enemy combatant”
and on this basis deprived him of all due process rights guaranteed
under the US Constitution.
Amid sensational headlines,
Padilla was placed under military detention, denied legal counsel or
any form of judicial process, and locked away in solitary confinement
under the most inhuman conditions.
Padilla, now 36, was considered
a “test case” in the Bush administration’s assumption
of extraordinary powers, justified in the name of the “war on
terror.” These include the supposed right of the president, simply
on his own say-so, to declare any individual an “enemy combatant,”
whether or not he is captured on a battlefield (Padilla was arrested
in the US, at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport), and
lock him up indefinitely.
Last fall, having suffered
a number of reverses in the federal courts and facing a Supreme Court
review of Padilla’s military confinement, the Bush administration
removed him from the Naval brig and charged him in a criminal indictment
on terrorism charges unrelated to the “dirty bomb” allegations
that were used to throw him into a legal black hole in the first place.
He is now imprisoned in Florida,
and his lawyers are seeking to get the criminal charges against him
thrown out on the grounds that he was subjected to systematic torture
while under military detention and denied his constitutional rights.
The video images themselves,
which made the front pages of major newspapers across the US on Monday,
depict one of the few interruptions of Padilla’s three-year-and-eight-month
incarceration and solitary confinement—when he was taken to the
dentist for a root canal operation.
In the video, Padilla first
extends his bare feet out of a small opening at the bottom of his cell
door. They are then manacled. His hands, extended through a different
window, receive the same treatment. His three guards, dressed in camouflage
battle uniforms with their riot helmet visors down, open the door and
remove Padilla from the cell.
Padilla is submissive and
docile during the entire encounter. He gets a brief glimpse of the barren
corridor outside his cell before blacked-out goggles and a noise-canceling
headset are affixed to his head.
There are 16 cells in the
unit—8 on the upper level and 8 on the lower level—but Padilla’s
is the only one occupied. He is then marched off, flanked by his captors.
The methods depicted in these
images, employed under direct order from the highest levels of the US
government, are those normally associated with police-state regimes.
Taken together, the images reveal one episode in the systematic and
sadistic destruction of a human personality. Every action on the part
of Padilla’s captors was undertaken to cause discomfort, hopelessness
and depression, and ultimately to break his will to live.
Lawyers for Padilla filed
a motion October 4 in the US District Court in the Southern District
of Florida asking the court to throw out the criminal charges against
their client on the grounds that he was tortured while in the custody
of the US military. The legal brief provides a harrowing description
of systematic mental and physical torture, including prolonged isolation,
shackling and stress positions, and the administration of psychotropic
drugs.
Only a week before the filing
of the brief, the US Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of
2006, which codifies in US law the concept of “unlawful enemy
combatant” and sanctions the continued torture of prisoners held
by the American military and intelligence agencies. It denies people
held at Guantanamo Bay and other US prison camps the fundamental right
of habeas corpus—the right to challenge their detention in court—and
deprives them of basic due process protections guaranteed by the US
Constitution.
The premise of the lawyers’
argument is that Padilla’s treatment was so egregious that the
government has forfeited the right to prosecute him, and that any such
prosecution would be a violation of his due process rights. There is
a tradition in US law that when treatment “shocks the conscience,”
not only must the specific evidence obtained during the treatment be
rejected, but the entire case must be thrown out.
The military has openly admitted
that its treatment of Padilla has been designed to create a sense of
complete helplessness. The filing quotes Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby,
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as stating in January 2003
that “only after such time as Padilla has perceived that help
is not on the way can the United States reasonably expect to obtain
all possible intelligence information” from him. He was deprived
access to a lawyer for two years because communication would disrupt
“the sense of dependency and trust” necessary for the interrogation.
According to the filing,
“In an effort to gain Mr. Padilla’s ‘dependency and
trust,’ he was tortured for nearly the entire three years and
eight months of his unlawful detention. The torture took myriad forms,
each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the
loss of the will to live.”
The lawyers state that the
basic ingredient of this torture was “stark isolation for a substantial
portion of his captivity”—from June 9, 2002, to March 2,
2004. It was only in March 2004 that Padilla was provided access to
a lawyer.
In addition to prolonged
solitary confinement, Padilla was subjected to sensory deprivation.
“His tiny cell—nine feet by seven feet—had no view
to the outside world. The door to his cell had a window. However, it
was covered by a magnetic sticker, depriving Mr. Padilla of even a view
into the hallway and adjacent common areas of his unit. He was not given
a clock or a watch and for most of the time of his captivity, he was
unaware whether it was day or night, or what time of year or day it
was.”
“In addition to his
extreme isolation,” the filing continues, “Mr. Padilla was
also viciously deprived of sleep. This sleep deprivation was achieved
in a variety of ways. For a substantial period of his captivity, Mr.
Padilla’s cell contained only a steel bunk with no mattress....
A number of ruses were employed to keep Mr. Padilla from getting necessary
sleep and rest,” including loud noises throughout the night.
To complete his sense of
isolation, Padilla was denied reading material and even, at one point,
the mirror in his tiny room. “He was never given any regular recreation
time. Often, when he was brought outside for some exercise, it was done
at night, depriving Mr. Padilla of sunlight for many months at a time.
The disorientation Mr. Padilla experienced due to not seeing the sun
and having no view on the outside world was exacerbated by his captors’
practice of turning on extremely bright lights in his cell or imposing
complete darkness for durations of twenty-four hours, or more.”
More direct forms of torture
were also used, including being placed in physically stressful positions
for extended periods of 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.”
Interrogators lied to Padilla
about where he was and threatened to deport him to places, including
Guantánamo Bay, where they said his treatment would be even worse.
“He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol
poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution....
Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake,
and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla. Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given
drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide
(LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during
his interrogations.”
“Apart from the psychological
damage done to Mr. Padilla,” the filing states, “there were
numerous health problems brought on by the conditions of his captivity.
Mr. Padilla frequently experienced cardiothoracic difficulties while
sleeping, or attempting to fall asleep, including a heavy pressure on
his chest and an inability to breathe or move his body.
“In one incident Mr.
Padilla felt a burning sensation pulsing through his chest. He requested
medical care but was given no relief.... The strain brought on by being
placed in stress positions caused Mr. Padilla great discomfort and agony.
Many times he requested some form of pain relief but was denied by the
guards.”
Padilla’s attorneys
contend that as a result of this sadistic treatment, their client has
been so damaged mentally and emotionally as to complicate their efforts
to prepare their case in his behalf. They have been forced to ask that
Padilla not be allowed to testify in his own defense.
The attorneys report that
Padilla is passive, friendly and likes to hear how the Chicago Bears
football team is doing, but when they bring up questions relating to
the charges against him, the Naval brig where he was held, or the interrogations
to which he was subjected, he begins to twitch and contort his manacled
body, and is unable to answer.
“Mr. Padilla remains
unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually
his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation
scheme,” public defender Andrew G. Patel, who has represented
Padilla since the beginning of his incarceration, recently told the
New York Times.
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