Citizen Padilla (Part I: Judge Cooke's Torturous Sentence)

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from OurFuture.org:



Citizen Padilla (Part I: Judge Cooke's Torturous Sentence)
By Lewis Koch

January 22nd, 2008 - 1:23pm ET


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Note: I'm awfully pleased and proud to present the first in a major several-part series from Chicago investigative reporter Lewis Z. Koch on the Jose Padilla case and its meaning for the American republic. Check back here daily for more. His co-author is Brad Jacobson — Rick Perlstein

Jose Padilla, the first United States citizen in the “War on Terror” to have his constitutional rights stripped from him by a stroke of George W. Bush’s pen, was sentenced today to 17 years and four months in Miami by Federal Court Judge Marcia Cooke, five and a half years after his arrest. The charges—this time—were that he and two others conspired to murder, kidnap and maim individuals in a foreign country, as well as conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, and providing material support to terrorists. The prosecution never named any specific individual or nation where this violence was to have occurred.

The two other conspirators tried and found guilty with Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun of Ft. Lauderdale and Kifah Wael Jayyousi of Detroit, sentenced to 16 years and nine months and 12 years and eight months respectively. The jury, after listening to three months of testimony, arrived at its verdict—guilty on all counts—in a day and a half.

The Padilla case is central to the question of whether President Bush, CIA chief George Tenet and others lied when they said “the United States does not torture.” Judge Cooke, a protégé of both Jeb and George Bush, refused to allow the showing of videotapes of Padilla being questioned and probably tortured during his three and a half years in solitary confinement in a Naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

Prior to the start of the trial, the prosecution revealed it had 78 videotapes of Padilla’s interrogation in the Naval brig; although the final tape, the 78th, according to the prosecution, had somehow turned up “missing.” Despite the current controversy over the CIA’s destruction of tapes showing severe “interrogation techniques” (a k a “torture”) used on two Al Qaeda suspects—one of whom, Abu Zubaydah, was said to have named Padilla as a terrorist in training—Cooke was only mildly distressed about the missing tape. Though she had the option of insisting the Government produce the tape or dismiss one or more of the charges against Padilla, she never exercised it. She also threatened harsh sanctions against defense attorneys caught leaking the contents of any of the 77 tapes. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/citizen-padilla-part-i-judge-cookes-torturous-sentence

[FourScore]

1. This is so shameful! n/t