by Glenn Greenwald
The story of Jose Padilla, continuing through the events of yesterday, expresses so much of the true nature of the War on Terror and especially America's justice system. In 2002, the American citizen was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, publicly labeled by John Ashcroft as The Dirty Bomber, and then imprisoned for the next three years on U.S. soil as an "enemy combatant" without charges of any kind, and denied all contact with the outside world, including even a lawyer. During his lawless incarceration, he was kept not just in extreme solitary confinement but extreme sensory deprivation as well, and was abused and tortured to the point of severe and probably permanent mental incapacity (Bush lawyers told a court that they were unable to produce videos of Padilla's interrogations because those videos were mysteriously and tragically "lost").Needless to say, none of the government officials responsible for this abuse of a U.S. citizen on American soil has been held accountable in any way. That's because President Obama decreed that Bush officials shall not be criminally investigated for War on Terror crimes, while his Justice Department vigorously defended John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld and other responsible functionaries in civil suits brought by Padilla seeking damages for what was done to him.
As usual, the Obama DOJ cited national security imperatives and sweeping theories of presidential power to demand that Executive Branch officials be fully shielded from judicial scrutiny (i.e., shielded from the rule of law) for their illegal acts (the Obama DOJ: "Here, where Padilla's damage claims directly relate, inter alia, to the President’s war powers, including whether and when a person captured in this country during an armed conflict can be held in military detention under the laws of war, it would be particularly inappropriate for this Court to unnecessarily reach the merits of the constitutional claims" (emphasis added)). With one rare exception, federal courts, as usual, meekly complied. Thus, a full-scale shield of immunity has been constructed around the high-level government officials who put Padilla in a hermetically sealed cage with no charges and then abused and tortured him for years.
The treatment Padilla has received in the justice system is, needless to say, the polar opposite of that enjoyed by these political elites. Literally days before it was required to justify to the U.S. Supreme Court how it could imprison an American citizen for years without charges or access to a lawyer, the Bush administration suddenly indicted Padilla -- on charges unrelated to, and far less serious than, the accusation that he was A Dirty Bomber -- and then successfully convinced the Supreme Court to refuse to decide the legality of Padilla's imprisonment on the grounds of "mootness" (he's no longer being held without charges so there's nothing to decide).
At Padilla's trial, the judge excluded all evidence of the abuse to which he was subjected and even admitted statements he made while in custody before he was Mirandized. Unsurprisingly, Padilla was convicted on charges of "supporting Islamic terrorism overseas" -- but not any actual Terrorist plots ("The government’s chief evidence was an application form that government prosecutors said Mr. Padilla, 36, filled out to attend an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000") -- and then sentenced to 17 years in prison, all above and beyond the five years he was imprisoned with no due process.
Not content with what was done to Padilla, the Bush DOJ -- and then the Obama DOJ -- contested the sentence on appeal, insisting that it was too lenient; Padilla also appealed, arguing that the trial court made numerous errors in excluding his evidence while allowing the Government's. Yesterday, a federal appeals panel of the 11th Circuit issued a ruling, by a 2-1 vote, rejecting each and every one of Padilla's arguments. It then took the very unusual step of vacating the 17-year-sentence imposed by the trial court as too lenient and, in effect, ordered the trial judge to impose a substantially harsher prison term:
Read more:
AP Photo/J. Pat Carter
