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| Jose Padilla's treatment while held without charge at the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., shown in this aerial
photo, is the subject of a civil lawsuit against the government. Brad Nettles/The Post and Courier/AP/file |
In Padilla interrogation, no checks or balances
Oversight of the executive branch regarding treatment of terror detainees remains inadequate, say legal analysts.
from the September 4, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, says suggestions that Padilla is a different person after his years in military custody are not evidence of illegal abuse. Simply being held in a federal prison can change an inmate's personality, but that doesn't mean prison officials tortured him, Commander Gordon says. "I bet I would be different," he says.
In terms of oversight, Gordon says, Defense Department personnel stand ready to fully investigate any credible allegations of torture or other illegal conduct at the brig. "Credible allegations of illegal conduct are taken seriously," he says. "In this case we don't believe that to have occurred."
In Mr. Mohammed's case, his allegations were referred to the inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency, which will neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a probe.
Even if an oversight investigation verified some or all of Padilla's claims, it is unlikely that he would find himself a free man anytime soon. Padilla was convicted in a terror conspiracy trial in Miami on Aug. 16. He is set to be sentenced in December and faces up to life in prison.
Apart from the criminal case, a separate group of lawyers has filed a civil lawsuit in South Carolina seeking a judicial ruling declaring the US government's treatment of Padilla in the brig illegal and unconstitutional.
Justice Department lawyers are expected to ask that Padilla's suit be thrown out of court because the litigation would likely reveal state secrets about Padilla's interrogation, legal analysts say. Such a move would again prevent public scrutiny of the torture allegations, these analysts say.
"If they invoke the state secrets privilege, that is the ultimate trump card," says Douglas Kmiec, a professor at Pepperdine University Law School in Malibu, Calif. So far, every time the government has invoked the state secrets privilege in recent years, the case has been thrown out of court, he says.
Civil libertarians and human rights experts say oversight and accountability are important because Padilla's treatment by the military could happen to others.
"This is a dangerous precedent," says Douglas Johnson, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Center for Victims of Torture. "Padilla may well deserve to be put away for the rest of his life, but some key principles of American law and culture were violated, and that means that other people could also be in danger of their rights being violated."
The Center for Victims of Torture seeks to provide a healing environment for those who have faced physical and psychological torture overseas. Dr. Johnson says patients at the center have faced many of the same techniques allegedly used against Padilla.
"Isolation has been a consistent methodology of repressive regimes [overseas]," he says. "It is very, very frightening that our government has chosen to use this methodology."
Padilla's claims are different than those of most people who say they've been tortured. More substantive than merely a verbal accusation, the three psychological reports and Padilla's degraded mental condition represent direct evidence of abuse, say experts in the treatment of torture victims.
"There is a valid and objective way to evaluate all this," says Scott Allen of Physicians for Human Rights and author of a recent PHR/Human Rights First report, "Leave No Mark," that discusses how US interrogators may face criminal liability in the future.
| For further information: | |
| • | Psychiatric assessment report by Angela M Hegarty [PDF] |
| • | Report by Stuart Grassian, M.D. [PDF] |
| • | Forensic evaluation report by Patricia A. Zapf, Ph.D [PDF] |
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