Supreme Court declines case accusing Donald Rumsfeld of torture

A federal judge and a federal appeals court threw the suit out, ruling that it was beyond the expertise of the federal courts to examine sensitive issues of military interrogation policy and intelligence gathering.

In urging the high court to hear the appeal, Padilla’s lawyers said the appeals court had granted military officials a “sweeping national security exemption” for gross government misconduct.

“It is hard to conceive of a more profound constitutional violation than the torture of a US citizen on US soil,” Wizner wrote in his brief urging the high court to take up Padilla’s case.

“With the court of appeals’ holding that Mr. Padilla’s claims of torture are nonjusticiable, our legal system has arrived at the bottom of the slippery slope,” he said.

Lawyers for Mr. Rumsfeld and the other military officials, urged the high court to reject the appeal.

“Petitioners seek to provide enemy combatants fighting against the United States with damages remedies that are clearly unavailable" to US soldiers, Washington Attorney Richard Klingler wrote in his brief on behalf of the defendants in the suit.

“This court has repeatedly emphasized that courts should hesitate before intruding into matters where sensitive interests in national security and foreign affairs are at stake,” Mr. Klingler told the justices.

Padilla's story

Padilla was arrested in 2002 shortly after arriving in Chicago from the Middle East. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and initially held in the criminal justice system in New York. On the eve of a court-hearing seeking his release, the government designated Padilla an enemy combatant and transferred him to a military brig in South Carolina.

Bush administration officials justified his detention in military custody with the alarming accusation that Padilla was plotting with Al Qaeda to launch an imminent radiological “dirty bomb” attack on a US city.

That allegation was later dropped. Nonetheless, Padilla was subjected to a systematic regime of extreme isolation, sensory deprivation, stress positions, and other controversial behavior-modification techniques designed to facilitate his ongoing interrogation. Time was of the essence, according to government officials. Extreme measures were deemed necessary and were approved by senior officials.

During the early stages of his interrogation in 2002 and early 2003, he was effectively “disappeared.” He was housed in a single cell with windows blacked out, the only prisoner on an entire maximum security wing of the brig. He was denied all contact with the outside world – no lawyer, no family members, no opportunity to see a judge. After 10 months, the US government allowed him to send brief word to his mother that he was still alive.

In the meantime, unknown to Padilla, lawyers working on his behalf filed a habeas corpus petition to force the government to defend the legality of Padilla’s military detention before a neutral judge.

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