Padilla Sues Ex-Government Lawyer (John Yoo)

[RamboLiberal]

Source: NY Times

Jose Padilla, the American citizen who was held in military detention for more than three years as an enemy combatant, filed a lawsuit Friday against a former Justice Department lawyer who helped provide the legal justifications for what the suit says was Mr. Padilla’s unconstitutional confinement and “gross physical and psychological abuse.”

The lawyer, John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote or helped prepare a series of legal memorandums on interrogations and the treatment of detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks.

A lawyer for Mr. Yoo, Eric M. George, called the suit “a political diatribe” that “belongs, at best, in a journal, not before a federal court.”

Mr. Padilla was transferred from military custody to the criminal justice system in 2006, and in August he was convicted of terrorism-related charges in Miami, where he awaits sentencing.

The new lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, seeks only one dollar in damages. “That’s what Padilla directed us to ask for,” said Jonathan M. Freiman, one of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers. “At bottom, this isn’t about money. It’s about right and wrong.”


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/us/04cnd-padilla.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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IMHO Yoo is a bigger threat to America than Padilla ever was!

[PDJane]

1. I share that assessment.

Torture and extraordinary rendition have become the American way.

[The Magistrate]

2. Something Certainly Needs To Happen To That Yoo Critter, Ma'am

[karlrschneider]

3. It's a start but I'd rather he was defenestrated, not just sued for a dollar.

...

[rodeodance]

4. Hit him in his pocketbook---he will not laugh at that!

[Buzz Clik]

5. Oh, man! This is exquisite news! John Yoo is solely responsible for giving away many of our rights.

It was Yoo, while flying solo in the Office of Legal Counsel, who wove the tapestry that now firmly covers Bush's caboose. You want to know why we cannot impeach? Look no further than Yoo and his treasonous legal discourse.

Drag Yoo's butt into court, and that tapestry might well start to unravel.

:bounce: :thumbsup: :dem: :headbang:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

8. I agree. I understand the nominal sum, however, it'd be better if he hit the a-hole in the pocket

He deserves to have to pay. However, can he be sued as an individual if he worked "for the govt?"

[Roland99]

6. I have but two words to say ....

Fuck Yoo!

[pennylane100]

7. That would make a great bumper sticker in Berkeley.

[Duer 157099]

19. Although maybe it should be Screw Yoo

i think using the f word on a bumper sticker might be a problem

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

9. Fuck Yoo!

:)

[Stuart G]

20. I believe that John Yoo should be waterboarded.. Fuck Yoo.. 2nd this vote

[pinto]

10. Good, Yoo has had a free ride in the whole Gitmo gambit.

[struggle4progress]

11. Jose Padilla sues ex-government lawyer over alleged torture (SF Chron)

... Military officials relied on John Yoo's writings in subjecting Jose Padilla to prolonged sensory deprivation, sleep interruption, stress positions and other techniques designed to break his will, Padilla's lawyers said in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco. Padilla faces sentencing Monday in Miami.

The same lawyers filed a similar suit in South Carolina last year against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials who they said authorized Padilla's detention and harsh treatment. One new element in Friday's suit against Yoo is that it seeks to hold a former government lawyer responsible for allegedly unconstitutional acts by officials who followed his legal advice.

"John Yoo was central to the justification and creation of the torture system," Jonathan Freiman, an attorney at a Yale Law School human rights clinic who represents Padilla, said in a statement. "What Yoo seems to have forgotten is that lawyers are not above the law." ...

The Justice Department repudiated the memo in 2004, when Gonzales was up for confirmation as attorney general. Before the document surfaced, the official who signed it, Jay Bybee, Yoo's Justice Department supervisor, was appointed by President Bush to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/04/BANDU9K5L.DTL

[Supersedeas]

22. i smell the discretionary immunity defense

[Pachamama]

12. Anyone know where we can contribute to the legal fund for Padilla to take on the scumbag Yoo?

What was done to Padilla is the most despicable and un-american and inhumane and unconstitutional treatment ever authorized by our Gov't (that we know of) and John Yoo is the scum of the century as far as I'm concerned. Between what Yoo authored for this administration to do and that was carried out, he deserves to be found guilty in a court of law.

[ninkasi]

13. Yoo represents the worst of the US

He is a bottom feeding, scum sucking, troglodyte. Away with you, Yoo. You are the worst we have to offer. May the penalties you have approved on others, be visited on you.

[spag68]

14. John Yoo

Have all of you forgot about David Addington? He is at least as basd as Yoo and maybe worse.

[AnneD]

15. If there is justice ....

in the US....they will render that son of a bitch Yoo and give him a taste of his own medicine. He and Karl Rove are cut from the same evil cloth.

[annabanana]

16. The unilateral, incontestable declaration of this man as an "enemy combatant",

a person without any rights at all was the thing that brought home to me that I could personally be in danger from this criminal syndicate masquerading as an administration.

If an American Citizen can be so declared without recourse, no American Citizen is safe.

I will be watching this with hope and trepidation.

[PDJane]

17. and keep watching the Senate.........

and the "homegrown terrorist act." There's a reason for Hailburton's contract for concentration camps.

[Sivafae]

18. I watched a debate between Yoo and someone discussing this

The one thing that was never mentioned was whether or not someone is fighting under a state flag or not, they are still not devoid of their human rights.
I am glad to see this.

[sattahipdeep]

21. "Puerto Rican Taliban,"

Padilla, dubbed the "Puerto Rican Taliban," was arrested in May 2002
at Chicago's O'Hare airport after returning from Egypt and was taken
to a US navy prison in South Carolina.

US authorities justified placing a US citizen in military detention as
an "enemy combatant," without charge, by saying Padilla was suspected
of planning to detonate a radioactive bomb in the United States.

But when he was transferred to the civilian justice system after
three-and-a half years in detention without charge, the indictment
made no mention of the so-called dirty bomb plot.

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=209963&s=&i=&t=Sentencing_for_US_man_convicted_of_helping_Al-Qaeda_opens