Naomi Klein: Torture Is Finally On Trial

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/48489/

Torture Is Finally on Trial

By Naomi Klein, The Guardian. Posted February 26, 2007.

Something remarkable is going on in a Miami courtroom. The cruel methods US interrogators have used since September 11 to "break" prisoners are finally being put on trial. This was not supposed to happen. The Bush administration's plan was to put José Padilla on trial for allegedly being part of a network linked to international terrorists. But Padilla's lawyers are arguing that he is not fit to stand trial because he has been driven insane by the government.

- snip -

According to his lawyers and two mental health specialists who examined him, Padilla has been so shattered that he lacks the ability to assist in his own defence. He is convinced that his lawyers are "part of a continuing interrogation program" and sees his captors as protectors. In order to prove that "the extended torture visited upon Mr Padilla has left him damaged," his lawyers want to tell the court what happened during those years in the navy brig. The prosecution strenuously objects, maintaining that "Padilla is competent" and that his treatment is irrelevant.

The US district judge Marcia Cooke disagrees. "It's not like Mr Padilla was living in a box. He was at a place. Things happened to him at that place." The judge has ordered several prison employees to testify on Padilla's mental state at the hearings, which began yesterday. They will be asked how a man who is alleged to have engaged in elaborate anti-government plots now acts, in the words of brig staff, "like a piece of furniture."

- snip -

Many have suffered the same symptoms as Padilla. According to James Yee, a former army Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo, there is an entire section of the prison called Delta Block for detainees who have been reduced to a delusional state. "They would respond to me in a childlike voice, talking complete nonsense. Many of them would loudly sing childish songs, repeating the song over and over." All the inmates of Delta Block were on 24-hour suicide watch.

Human Rights Watch has exposed a US-run detention facility near Kabul known as the "prison of darkness" -- tiny pitch-black cells, strange blaring sounds. "Plenty lost their minds," one former inmate recalled. "I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors."

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[salin]

1. Interesting development in the case.

Good for US district judge Cooke - for not allowing the prosecution to shut down this line of inquiry.

[Hissyspit]

2. kick to keep in mind n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

3. K/R

This needs to be noticed.

[gratuitous]

4. If I read it correctly

The government's argument is basically that they don't think Padilla has been driven mad, but that if he is mad, it's madness brought on by unnamed, unspecified circumstances that occurred since his arrest. Okay, the unnamed and unspecified circumstances were the government's incarceration and treatment of Padilla, but the government can hardly be held accountable for that!

It's a circularity of argument that would do Joseph Stalin and the Soviet penal system proud.

[Hissyspit]

5. .

[The Stranger]

6. Glad the MSM is covering this, given all of the important things they usually bury this in.

[Vincardog]

7. When the Truth comes out can we please bring the Grinning Chimp Darth et al to justice?

IMPEACH THEM ALREADY

[Quantess]

8. Good read. Thanks for posting it.