The Padilla Jury

The Jose Padilla trial is now in the hands of a jury. For those who have followed this trial, the "evidence" presented against Padilla is pathetically weak. To recap the case: Mr. Padilla, 36, was arrested in 2002 and described as an operative of Al Qaeda plotting to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the United States. He was detained in a military brig in South Carolina for more than three years, but was transferred to civilian custody here last year, after the Supreme Court considered stepping into the case. An American citizen, held for 4 years without charges or trial by the American government, in order to protect American citizens. (?) At that point, Mr. Padilla was added to an existing terrorism conspiracy case against Mr. Hassoun and Mr. Jayyousi. The bomb charges are not part of this Miami case, and lawyers have not been allowed to mention them in the trial. Editorial commentary from the Christian Science Monitor is here. In a three-part series (one, two, three), Monitor reviews the situation in great depth: There is a reason the government's case is so thin, legal analysts say. If prosecutors brought the dirty-bomb plot or other alleged illegal actions by Padilla into the Miami case, it would open the door for courtroom scrutiny of the government's use of coercive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects, including Padilla. And that would have taken jurors deep into the shadowy underside of America's war on terror – a journey in Padilla's case that wends its way from his cell on an isolated wing of the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., through covert CIA interrogation sites overseas to an alleged torture chamber in Morocco. This is a part of the war on terror the Bush administration would rather keep quiet. Well, no kidding... The precedent that could be set here is monumental. Taken from Part 1 of the CSM articles: US intelligence officials had good reason to want to learn what Padilla knew. He was detained on suspicion that he was plotting with Al Qaeda to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" in the US. He was arrested eight months after the 9/11 attacks as he stepped off a plane in Chicago from the Middle East. Officials were worried about the possibility of a second wave of terror attacks and the presence of sleeper cells in the US. It turns out, that he wasn't, in fact, plotting this. How do we know? Because he wasn't charged with it. The charges against Padilla are conspiring to “murder, kidnap and maim” people overseas. No mention of bomb-making or terrorism. In short, the 3 year & 7 month breaking of Padilla's mental health did not yield a captured terrorist. We have destroyed a man who is innocent of terrorism; he is an American citizen. We have terrorized American citizens to (purportedly) keep American citizens safe from terror. Some people have said that this "liberal" reaction to the Patriot Act and other similar legislation is baseless, and that tools like torture are necessary to fight terror - innocent people won't be harmed...it won't happen. I have news for those people: It already has happened. Marty Lederman has another analysis here. Some of the scariest points are in the "Jacoby Declaration:" there is no more important public government document in this whole scandal than the Declaration filed in the Padilla case by Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Ledermen continues: The most remarkable thing about the Jacoby Declaration, in my view, is not even its casual and horrific use of euphemism, but rather that it is a public document -- indeed, a document created in order to be submitted to courts in order to persuade them that such detention is lawful and, most importantly, that it is critical to place such detentions entirely outside ordinary legal process, to a netherworld without lawyers and judges (indeed, without any contact with persons outside the "relationship" of "trust and dependency"). Jacoby again: Permitting Padilla any access to counsel may substantially harm our national security interests... Wow.. our government has argued, in court, that habaes corpus (cited as access to counsel) "may substantially harm our national security interests". Damn that freedom. Let's take it from Americans and give it to Iraqis. (I think the Iraqi people's freedom is the latest excuse for us being there).