Injustice in George Bush’s America

Within hours of the announcement that the federal court jury in Miami had found Jose Padilla guilty on all three counts of “terrorism conspiracy charges,” the White House and Attorney General saw fit to celebrate the conviction and praise the jury for the “impartial justice” of its verdict. Gonzales described the verdict as “a significant victory,” while my print NYT headline called it a “Victory for President.” But no matter what Padilla actually did — and we may never know — no American can be proud of what happened to Jose Padilla.

The Administration’s reactions stood in marked contrast to the disappointment and empathy they displayed for another convicted felon, an all too loyal colleague another jury found guilty of lying and obstructing justice while betraying the identity of an American covert agent. But of course, that felon had lied to cover up the lies and obstruction of the Vice President of the United States and possibly others — so empathy and commutation were due because he was one of theirs. Jose Padilla was just an Hispanic convert to Islam, but one the Administration frequently publicized and hyped as being a terrorist plotting to use a “dirty bomb” or drop grenades on Americans. Such pre-trial publicity coming from the Administration would have been problematic for ethical prosecutors, but of course, this Administration was not originally planning to try Mr. Padilla. They just wanted to imprison and interrogate him, indefinitely.

Last night, investigative reporter Lewis Z. Koch, who has been covering the Padilla trial for Firedoglake, posted his “Reflections on Padilla.” It is a chilling, depressing story, but a must read. Koch focuses on the reprehensible treatment Padilla received at the hands of the US military while he was kept in isolation and tortured over three years. Please read the post and follow the link to the interview with Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y. and assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, who examined Padilla for a total of 22 hours after his three years in military imprisonment.

The short version is this: The US government systematically tortured Jose Padilla, and his prosecutors engaged in egregious misconduct. Padilla’s military jailors kept him in complete isolation and subjected him to extreme sensory and sleep deprivation. Their interrogation methods caused serious brain damage to a man who came to identify with his jailers and to believe that he would be better off being convicted of crimes he did not commit, because it was the only option that would allow him to be removed from the reprehensible military system and put in a more humane US prison system.

Tom Grieve Alex Koppelman [h/t Biodun] at War Room/Salon tracked down this quote from Angela Hegarty reacting to the verdict: [h/t john in sacramento]

Actually, according to the Monitor, today’s verdict may have come as happy news to Padilla. He was terrified that if he were acquitted, President Bush would declare him an enemy combatant again and move him back to the brig. Angela Hegarty, a forensic psychiatrist who examined Padilla, told the paper that “there is no question in my mind that his first and most important priority is to not go back to the brig. This is what leaves me chilled, if one were to offer him a long prison term or return to the brig, he would take prison, in a heartbeat … He told me more than once that if he went back to the brig he knew what he had to do.” What he “had to do,” Hegarty said, is commit suicide.

During Padilla’s three years in confinement, the US government denied him all legal rights including access to counsel and habeas corpus. It held him, an American citizen, without charges — a violation of the Constitution. It chose to charge him with a crime only when the Justice Department was faced with a likely slap down and reversal by the US Supreme Court. What happened to Padilla violated American statutes and treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, the Constitution, and various Supreme Court decisions about how prisoners are supposed to be treated, even under military jurisdiction. If the stories of his treatment are true — and they are no different from what we’ve heard in numerous cases of detainees held as “unlawful enemy combatants” — his jailors and interrogators, and those who directed them, committed serious crimes, crimes we once associated only with the most brutal dictators, like Pinochet in Chile.

The jurors who convicted Padilla did their duty, presumably basing their verdict on the evidence presented at trial. But that evidence did not include any information on the government’s egregious and lawless misconduct during his long incarceration. The jurors were not told he had been tortured, or held in isolation, or denied counsel, because the judge ruled that none of the pre-trial misconduct was relevant to the charges against him. The jury was left in the dark about the Justice Department’s duplicity or any of the backgound that might have revealed this was little more than a show trial, a trial forced by misconduct and staged for propaganda purposes by a regime that had no regard for truth, or justice or the rule of law. They did not hear from Dr. Hegarty and so did not know that Padilla’s mind had been broken by his jailors.

Last night I watched PBS’ NewsHour as AP reporter Curt Anderson, who wrote this story and as Lew Koch said, did an honest job covering the trial, tried to convey the horror of what had happened — but it never came across. He was saying things that should have elicited more questions, but Jim Lehrer’s follow up question missed the mark. Very little of the full story came out. To get a taste of that, read Glenn Greenwald’s summary and follow the links to his previous extensive coverage. The New York Times‘ lead editorial also gets the basics.

President Bush spent weeks following the Libby verdict struggling with whether the outcome was fair. Yesterday with no apparent thought at all, he sent out his spokesman to pronounce the Padilla verdict fair and just. We are losing the meaning of our own language.

Long-time respected FDLer Hugh summed it up:

The government’s own actions have been so criminal and have so tainted any legitimate judicial process that it raises the question: Who is more guilty? The government or Padilla? This is not how a justice system is supposed to work; the Spanish Inquistion maybe, but certainly not the justice system in what was once a democratic nation.

This may be just the beginning. Our government is declaring that Muslim charitable groups who may have provided direct or indirect financial assistance to any group connected to or deemed to be a “terrorist” organization — e.g., Hamas or Hezbollah, not just al Qaeda — can be designated an unindicted co-conspirator in trials of suspected terrorists. So if you think that Israel and the US are wrong in trying to economically strangle the people in Gaza and seek to help them through a Palestinian relief organization, you may find yourself listed as a “co-conspirator” in some trial you knew nothing about. And we are being conditioned to think that any Muslim person anywhere, citizen or not, can be suspected of scheming to form a “terrorist cell.” CNN’s Glen Beck and other right wing nuts reinforce this night after night.

It is the 1950s and “red scare” all over again, except the “enemy” are Muslims/terrorists instead of communists. And it’s not just here. It will bring out the worst in many, if we let it. Fight back.

AP Photo/Alan Diaz/January 2006.

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