Category Archives: Padilla

The government subjected Padilla to years of sensory deprivation, blocked most human contact, blackened his windows so he'd have no natural light and no idea of the passage of time (no clock, no radio), and made him sleep on a steel bed with no mattress. But they didn't mistreat him, and the fact he smiled when he saw a prison psychiatrist through a small metal opening in his door proves he's able to interact with people enough to participate in his defense. The contrary opinion by his psychiatrist is due to the fact that Padilla had to wear handcuffs during that interview due to prison rules, so there would be no way that anyone but the staff shrink could actually evaluate what he's really like.

That seems to be the essence of yesterday's testimony.

Washington Post, Padilla Was Deprived, Not Abused, Court Told:

During his 3 1/2 -year detention as an “enemy combatant,” accused al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla was at various times deprived of a clock, windows and a Koran, and forced to sleep on a metal bed frame without a mattress, according to testimony Tuesday from an official at the Navy brig where he was held in Charleston, S.C.

The account of Sanford E. Seymour, the brig's technical director, was narrow in scope and offered only a glimpse of Padilla's incarceration, which Padilla and his attorneys have said included torture that renders him psychologically unfit to stand trial.

Limited by a court ruling to what he had discussed with a psychologist evaluating Padilla's competence for trial, Seymour's testimony was sketchy but ran contrary to some of Padilla's most serious allegations.

“I told him I knew of no physical abuse,” Seymour testified.

New York Times, Jailers Testify About Padilla’s Confinement:

As Jose Padilla dropped his head and grew still, a senior official from the naval brig in Charleston, S.C., testified on Tuesday in federal court here that he had twice observed Mr. Padilla weeping in the electronically monitored cell where the military detained him for three years and eight months.

The brig’s technical director, Sanford E. Seymour, also said that Mr. Padilla, an American citizen who was designated an enemy combatant in 2002, sometimes slept on a steel bunk without a mattress, that the windows in his 80-square-foot cell were blackened and that brig employees covered up their nametags around him.

Mr. Seymour said that Mr. Padilla, a Muslim, occasionally visited with an imam and that his Koran was taken from him periodically; that he sometimes went outside to shoot baskets or sunbathe; and that when Mr. Padilla believed he had been administered LSD, it was really a flu shot.

These scattershot revelations, elicited by Mr. Padilla’s lawyers in a hearing of sharply limited scope, did not add up to a comprehensive portrait of Mr. Padilla’s time in the brig. But they were nonetheless significant, marking the first time Mr. Padilla’s military jailers were forced to speak publicly about the conditions of his secretive confinement without charges. …

… Bureau of Prisons psychologist, Dr. Buigas, disagreed with the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He said Dr. Zapf’s testing was invalidated by the fact that Mr. Padilla was handcuffed during the tests, a condition imposed on Dr. Zapf by prison officials.

The Times article also notes a debate over the government's attempt to introduce what it says was evidence Padilla is shamming:

Prosecutors tried to introduce into evidence what they said was an internal document from Al Qaeda that coached operatives to be obstructionist if captured, to avoid revealing information and to make a claim of torture even if no mistreatment had occurred. This document, which they referred to as the “Manchester manual” because it was found several years ago in Manchester, England, was what guided Mr. Padilla, they said.

“Don’t I have to have some evidence that Mr. Padilla was aware of this document and studied it?” Judge Cooke asked prosecutors.

In declining to admit the manual into evidence, she added that the manual would have converted the competency hearing into a debate over whether the defendant had been tortured in the brig.

For more on the “Manchester manual” see Dick Destiny's blog and a text of the Manchester manual at Cryptome.

Judge Orders Padilla Jail Personnel to Testify:

Officials at the Navy brig where terrorism suspect Jose Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant were ordered Friday to testify at a hearing to determine his psychological competency, a ruling that allows the defense to press its claims that sensory deprivation and torture in confinement have rendered the alleged al-Qaeda operative unfit to stand trial.

The ruling marks one of the few times since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that officials responsible for the jail conditions and interrogations of terrorism suspects have been called to testify, and it is the first time in the Padilla case.

I gather the hearing is “next week” but don't know exactly when. Pity it is going to be such a busy week for me, for I'd like to go. [UPDATE: Why do I have to read the Guardian, based in London, to learn that the hearing will be on the 22nd.]

Meanwhile, Padilla's co-defendants are asking to have their trial severed from his on the grounds that the media attention given to Padilla's case will poison theirs. There's some irony there, given that at least on the face of the indictment, the tarnishment seems much more likely to work the other way around: the facts alleged against the other defendants are more damning and more detailed than the rather thin gruel served up about Padilla himself.

Jose Padilla’s trial has been postponed from January 22 until April, to allow a full mental competency evaluation to be performed.

In what way, other than (thank goodness) the size of the prison population, is it wrong to call the incarceration and intentional breaking of Jose Padilla an American Gulag?

So far, I can think of only one other: that eventually — far too late? — the courts probably would have forced his release into the general prison population, and the fear of this outcome forced the government’s hand. But by then the damage seems to have been done.

Perhaps that’s enough for the long run. But perhaps not.

And, by the way, that case isn’t looking so great, is it?

Mental Exam Ordered for Terror Suspect.

A psychiatrist and a psychologist hired by Padilla’s attorneys concluded he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental problems stemming largely from his 3 1/2 years in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.

Prosecutors did not contest the request for the evaluation, although they do contest claims of mistreatment (while withholding evidence relevant to the conditions of confinement).

Trial date is still Jan. 22 — so far.