 |
| A juvenile delinquent and Muslim convert, Padilla became an Al Qaeda recruit, prosecutors charge. Reuters/file |
US terror interrogation went too far, experts say
Reports find that Jose Padilla's solitary confinement led to mental problems.
from the August 13, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
Tricky issue: US citizenship
The administration has faced criticism for using harsh interrogation tactics on foreign enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay and other locations overseas. But Padilla's situation is unique.
Padilla is a US citizen who was arrested and detained on US soil. Because of this status, his case was closely followed at the highest levels of the US government. The president himself signed the order authorizing Padilla's detention.
In 2002, the Justice Department produced a "torture" memo stating that victims would have to experience pain equivalent to organ failure to prove torture.
"The development of a mental disorder such as post-traumatic stress disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression, which can last a considerable period of time if untreated, might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement" to prove torture, the memo says.
Drs. Hegarty and Grassian say Padilla's psychological condition exceeds even the high standard for mental damage set by the 2002 torture memo. "This whole issue of torture turns on the question of what are the types of effects that one would expect from putting a person in this situation in the brig," says Grassian. "If you would expect a person to become so deranged as to become psychotically terrified, to me that constitutes torture."
The issue is not new. Lawyers representing Padilla in his criminal case in Miami filed motions last year charging that their client had been tortured while in military custody. They said the abuse rendered Padilla mentally incompetent to assist in his own defense at trial.
But in a February hearing, US District Judge Marcia Cooke sidestepped the torture accusations. She ruled that even though mental-health experts had identified mental disabilities, Padilla was competent enough to face prosecution.
"The mere fact that the defendant is suffering from a mental disease or defect does not render the defendant incompetent to stand trial," Judge Cooke declared.
Mental-health experts say that a legal determination of competence to stand trial doesn't undercut the severity of Padilla's existing mental disabilities.
Throughout his three-month trial in Miami, Padilla has sat quietly at the defense table. He looks more the part of a legal assistant in his charcoal gray suit with neatly cropped hair and eyeglasses than the radical jihadist he is alleged to have become. He turns and smiles to his mother when she attends the trial. But unlike his two codefendants he rarely interacts with his lawyers.
'I saw this individual happy ... joking'
A Bureau of Prisons psychologist who examined Padilla prior to the court competency hearing, found that Padilla was suffering from mental disabilities. But Dr. Rodolfo Buigas disagreed with the other mental-health experts on the severity of Padilla's conditions, painting a somewhat rosy picture of the onetime military detainee. "I saw this individual happy. I saw this individual joking in the context of the evaluation. I saw the full, broad range of emotions," Dr. Buigas testified.
The psychologist also testified that Padilla declined to answer most of his questions, including his date of birth, and refused to participate in any psychological testing during the six hours the two men spent together.
Others with more significant interaction with Padilla say his brig experience has left him in a state of mental disorganization.
Some psychological tests place him on par with individuals who have suffered brain damage, according to the reports prepared by Hegarty, Grassian, and Patricia Zapf, a New York psychologist and psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Padilla's treatment in the brig is classified as a state secret.
Ironically, no one knows this better than Padilla himself. When Hegarty, the psychiatrist, asked him about his interrogation in the brig, Padilla responded: "I can't talk about what happened to me because it is classified."
Although Padilla has been meeting with his Miami lawyers for more than a year and a half, he refuses to discuss his treatment in the brig in any detail.
The torture allegations made last year in the Miami court case were raised as a result of repeated sessions asking Padilla "yes or no" whether he'd endured the kinds of harsh interrogation tactics reported in the press. He reluctantly answered yes to some, and no to others. But his lawyers could pry no details or narrative from him.
They asked Hegarty for help.
He changed the subject and twitched
She spent days attempting to establish a rapport, days trying to get him to open up. "The first two hours were utterly useless each day. I got no data at all," Hegarty says. Eventually he would relax and talk about relatively minor subjects. When Hegarty tried to steer him toward the brig or the evidence in his criminal case "he would just stop, change the subject, and twitch," she said.
|
08/15/07 |
08/14/07 08/13/07 |
RSS feed
