Convicting
Padilla: this Legal Crime a Warning for All Americans
By Dave Lindorff
08/18/07 "ICH" -- - With habeas corpus a
thing of the past, with arrest and detention without
charge permitted, with torture and spying without court
oversight all the rage, with prosecutors free to tape
conversations between lawyers and their clients, and with
the judicial branch now infested by rightwing judges who
would have been at home in courtrooms of the Soviet Union
or Hitler's Germany, for all they seem to care about
common law tradition, the only real thing holding the
line against absolute tyranny in the U.S. has been the
jury.
Now, with Jose Padilla--a US citizen who was originally
picked up and held incommunicado on a military base for
three and a half years, publicly accused (though never
charged) with planning to construct and detonate a
so-called "dirty" nuclear device (this a guy
without a high school education!), all based upon
hearsay, evidence elicited by torture, and a few
overheard wiretapped conversations where prosecutors
claimed words like "zucchini" were code for
explosive devices-convicted on a charge of "planning
to murder," we see that juries in this era of a
bogus "war on terror" are ready to believe
anything.
That last line of defense-the common sense or ordinary
citizens in a jury box-is gone too.
The jury in this case apparently accepted the
government's contention that Padilla was a member of Al
Qaeda, and had returned from a trip to Pakistan full of
plans to wreak mayhem on his own country. They cared not
a whit for the fact that the government had used methods
against Padilla (three years of isolation and total
sensory deprivation that had driven him insane) which
would have made medieval torturers green with envy. They
cared not a whit that there was no real evidence against
Padilla.
This was, in the end, a case that most closely resembled
the famous Saturday Night Live skit in which witches were
dunked underwater to "prove" whether they were
in fact witches, and where if they drowned, they were
found to be innocent. In the end, Padilla's jury simply
bought the government's wild and wild-eyed story. They
decided he hadn't drowned, so he must be guilty.
His lawyers also say he was "held alone
in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little
human contact other than with his interrogators;
that his cell was electronically monitored and
his meals were passed to him through a slot in
the door; that windows were blackened, and there
was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a
steel platform after a foam mattress was taken
from him, along with his copy of the Koran, 'as
part of an interrogation plan'". |
Padilla can now expect to spend what's left of his life
in prison. Since the government has already driven him
insane, he will have the added burden of being mentally
unbalanced from the outset of his incarceration. His
survival prospects are not good.
The president promptly thanked the jury for their
"good judgment."
We can no doubt expect many more Padillas now that the
way has been paved for this kind of totalitarian approach
to law enforcement.
Beginning today, we can expect the government to begin
arresting people on an array of trumped-up charges,
locking them away in black sites, on military bases, or
maybe even overseas, subjecting them to all manner of
torture, and then finally bringing them to trial on
trumped-up charges. We can also expect juries, made
fearful by breathless warnings that "evil ones"
mean us and our nation harm, to buy the government's
stories.
Who is at risk? That's hard to say, but it's clear that
it won't just be hardened terrorist types. A presidential
executive order signed by Bush on July 17 declares that
anything that "undermining efforts to promote
economic reconstruction (sic) and political reform (sic)
in Iraq" could be deemed a crime making the
perpetrator subject to arrest. Would writing essays
critical of the president, the war in Iraq, or the
"reconstruction" effort in Iraq meet that
standard? Who knows? Would being interviewed for
commentary as part of a news story on English-language Al
Jezeera TV (which Bush and Cheney have declared to be
supportive of the Iraqi insurgency, and which Bush
reportedly at one point considered bombing!)?
And how about anti-war protesters? We already have
Washington, DC, under pressure from Homeland Security,
threatening the organization World Can't Wait with
multiple $10,000 fines for posting flyers around the city
announcing an anti-war march and rally on September 15.
If they go ahead with the protest, will they be joining
Padilla?
I have little doubt that this administration would love
to lock up journalistic critics and protesters in
military brigs, so the question is: how would juries
respond to charges that American journalists and
protesters against the war were treacherously undermining
the Bush war effort?
I used to be confident that most juries would laugh such
cases out of court. After the Padilla decision, I'm not
so sure.
You want to think that your fellow citizens have at least
some measure of common sense, but this case suggests
otherwise--that they are easily frightened, gullible, and
willing to believe the most fantastic claims of the
government.
The future does not look good for freedom in America.
Dave Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for
Impeachment", co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18208.htm
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