utter barbarism
New York Times - December 4, 2006
Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation By DEBORAH SONTAG
One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy
combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his
solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons
Station in Charleston, S.C.
That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush
administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had
detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.
“Today is May 21,” a naval official declared to a camera videotaping
the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on
Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.”
Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103.
They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr.
Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard
held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr.
Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be
manacled.
Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s
cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met
the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of
what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-
out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden
behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down
the hall to his root canal.
The videotape of that trip to the dentist, which was recently
released to Mr. Padilla’s lawyers and viewed by The New York Times,
offers the first concrete glimpse inside the secretive military
incarceration of an American citizen whose detention without charges
became a test case of President Bush’s powers in the fight against
terror. Still frames from the videotape were posted in Mr. Padilla’s
electronic court file late Friday.
To Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, the pictures capture the dehumanization of
their client during his military detention from mid-2002 until
earlier this year, when the government changed his status from enemy
combatant to criminal defendant and transferred him to the federal
detention center in Miami. He now awaits trial scheduled for late
January.
Together with other documents filed late Friday, the images represent
the latest and most aggressive sally by defense lawyers who declared
this fall that charges against Mr. Padilla should be dismissed for
“outrageous government conduct,” saying that he was mistreated and
tortured during his years as an enemy combatant.
Now lawyers for Mr. Padilla, 36, suggest that he is unfit to stand
trial. They argue that he has been so damaged by his interrogations
and prolonged isolation that he suffers post-traumatic stress
disorder and is unable to assist in his own defense. His
interrogations, they say, included hooding, stress positions,
assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of
“truth serums.”
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Todd Vician, said Sunday that the
military disputes Mr. Padilla’s accusations of mistreatment. And, in
court papers, prosecutors deny “in the strongest terms” the
accusations of torture and say that “Padilla’s conditions of
confinement were humane and designed to ensure his safety and security.”
“His basic needs were met in a conscientious manner, including Halal
(Muslim acceptable) food, clothing, sleep and daily medical
assessment and treatment when necessary,” the government stated.
“While in the brig, Padilla never reported any abusive treatment to
the staff or medical personnel.”
In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months.
Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only
severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an
affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla was held alone in
a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other
than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically
monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the
door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or
calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress
was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, “as part of an
interrogation plan.”
Mr. Padilla’s situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant
and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and
the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in
the military justice system.
Philip D. Cave, a former judge advocate general for the Navy and now
a lawyer specializing in military law, said, “There’s nothing
comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how
Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial
confinement.”
Ali al-Marri, a Qatari and Saudi dual citizen and the only enemy
combatant currently detained in the United States, has made similar
claims of isolation and deprivation at the brig in South Carolina.
The Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Vician, said Sunday that he could
not comment on the methods used to escort Mr. Padilla to the dentist.
Blackened goggles and earphones are rarely employed in internal
prison transports in the United States, but riot gear is sometimes
used for violent prisoners.
One of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, Orlando do Campo, said, however, that
Mr. Padilla was a “completely docile” prisoner. “There was not one
disciplinary problem with Jose ever, not one citation, not one act of
disobedience,” said Mr. do Campo, who is a lawyer at the Miami
federal public defender’s office.
In his affidavit, Mr. Patel said, “I was told by members of the brig
staff that Mr. Padilla’s temperament was so docile and inactive that
his behavior was like that of ‘a piece of furniture.’ “
Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers are locked in a tug of war
over the relevancy of Mr. Padilla’s military detention to the present
criminal case. Federal prosecutors have asked the judge to forbid Mr.
Padilla’s lawyers from mentioning the circumstances of his military
detention during the trial, maintaining that their accusations could
“distract and inflame the jury.”
But defense lawyers say it is unconscionable to ignore Mr. Padilla’s
military detention because, among other reasons, it altered him in a
way that will impinge on his trial.
Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor
Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y., who examined Mr. Padilla for a
total of 22 hours in June and September, said in an affidavit filed
Friday that he “lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense.”
“It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his
detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the
nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to
render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the
result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder,
complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation,”
Dr. Hegarty said in an affidavit for the defense.
Mr. Padilla’s status was abruptly changed to criminal defendant from
enemy combatant last fall. At the time, the Supreme Court was
weighing whether to take up the legality of his military detention -
and thus the issue of the president’s authority to seize an American
citizen on American soil and hold him indefinitely without charges -
when the Bush administration pre-empted its decision by filing
criminal charges against Mr. Padilla.
Mr. Padilla was added as a defendant in a terrorism conspiracy case
already under way in Miami. The strong public accusations made during
his military detention - about the dirty bomb, Al Qaeda connections
and supposed plans to set off natural gas explosions in apartment
buildings - appear nowhere in the indictment against him. The
indictment does not allege any specific violent plot against America.
Mr. Padilla is portrayed in the indictment as the recruit of a “North
American terror support cell” that sent money, goods and recruits
abroad to assist “global jihad” in general, with a special interest
in Bosnia and Chechnya. Mr. Padilla, the indictment asserts, traveled
overseas “to participate in violent jihad” and filled out an
application for a mujahedin training camp in Afghanistan.
Michael Caruso, a public defender for Mr. Padilla, pleaded
“absolutely not guilty” for him to charges of conspiracy and of
providing material support to terrorists. Mr. Padilla faces two
charges that each carry a maximum penalty of 15 years.
Over the summer, Judge Marcia G. Cooke of United States District
Court in Miami threw out the most serious charge, of conspiracy to
murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country, saying that it
replicated accusations in the other counts and could lead to multiple
punishments for a single crime. This was a setback for the
government, which has appealed the dismissal.
Mr. Padilla’s lawyers say they have had a difficult time persuading
him that they are on his side.
From the time Mr. Padilla was allowed access to counsel, Mr. Patel
visited him repeatedly in the brig and in the Miami detention center,
and Mr. Padilla has observed Mr. Patel arguing on his behalf in Miami
federal court.
But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless
mistrustful. “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,” Mr. Patel said.
Mr. do Campo said that Mr. Padilla was not incommunicative, and that
he expressed curiosity about what was going on in the world, liked to
talk about sports and demonstrated particularly keen interest in the
Chicago Bears.
But the defense lawyers’ questions often echo the questions
interrogators have asked Mr. Padilla, and when that happens, he gets
jumpy and shuts down, the lawyers said.
Dr. Hegarty said Mr. Padilla refuses to review the video recordings
of his interrogations, which have been released to his lawyers but
remain classified.
He is especially reluctant to discuss what happened in the brig,
fearful that he will be returned there some day, Mr. Patel said in
his affidavit.
“During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye
movements and contortions of his body,” Mr. Patel said. “The
contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled
and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel.”