Maybe American citizen Jose Padilla really was anxious to become a fifth-columnist terrorist in America. But the U.S. government never made that case. Unprincipled federal prosecutors simply won a conviction by playing on jurors' fears.
As The New York Times reports, the "only evidence" presented at Padilla's trial was a faded application form allegedly filled out by Padilla in the year 2000 to attend an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.
...snip...
Padilla, of course, suffered much worse at the hands of his American captors than did Lindh, who was only left severely injured and untreated, and duct-taped to a gurney in a dark, sealed shipping container for two weeks, save for an hour of daily torture, interrogation, and feeding. Padilla was held incommunicado for 3½ years in a solitary cell of a U.S. naval base in South Carolina. When he was removed for interrogations or medical treatment, he was blinded with opaque goggles and had ear muffs to blot out all sound, and shackeled hand and foot.
...snip...
If Padilla's trial was the model for the justice that is in store for Americans henceforth, we're all in serious danger. This trial was nothing short of an atrocity, from the day of Padilla's arrest to the day of his conviction. It will, I am sure, go down in history with the Dreyfus Case and other infamous miscarriages of justice as examples of unalloyed tyranny. Sadly, with the courts packed with Federalist clones, the likelihood of this being rectified on appeal is next to nil.
Full article here:
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/lindorff/011
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