Other cases of note include Jose Padilla who was arrested in 2002 on charges that he was planning to detonate a "dirty bomb" (this charge was later dropped for complete lack of evidence) and sentenced to 17 years in a Florida jail in 2007. Padilla was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention.
13 May 2009
MIAMI (AP) - Five men were convicted Tuesday of plotting to join forces with al-Qaida to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices in hopes of igniting an anti-government insurrection.
The jury in Miami acquitted another member of the so-called "Liberty City Six" in the sixth day of deliberations. Two previous trials ended in mistrials when jurors could not agree on the men's guilt or innocence.
Comment: Here we see the problem; if those jurors had been waterboarded a few dozen times they would surely have convicted!
They were arrested in June 2006 on charges of plotting terrorism with an undercover FBI informant they believed was from al-Qaida. Defense attorneys said terrorist talk recorded on dozens of FBI tapes was not serious and the men wanted only money.
Ringleader Narseal Batiste, 35, was the only one convicted of all four terrorism-related conspiracy counts, including plotting to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to wage war against the U.S. Batiste, who was on the vast majority of hundreds of FBI audio and video tapes, faces up to 70 years in prison. [...]
A key piece of evidence is an FBI video of the entire group pledging an oath of allegiance, or "bayat," to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden in a March 16, 2006, ceremony led by an FBI informant posing as "Brother Mohammed" from al-Qaida.
But Batiste, who testified in all three trials, insisted he was only going along with Mohammed so he could obtain $50,000 or more for his struggling construction business and a nascent community outreach program. Batiste was leader of a Miami chapter of a sect known as the Moorish Science Temple, which combines elements of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and does not recognize the U.S. government's full authority.
Defense lawyers also claimed the case was an FBI setup driven by informants who manipulated the group.
"This is a manufactured crime," Batiste attorney Ana M. Jhones said earlier in the trial.
Jose Padilla - gang member - patsy
Padilla's attorneys alleged that he was "held for 1,307 days in a 9-foot-by-7-foot cell, isolated for days or weeks at a time, physically assaulted and threatened with execution and other violence, kept awake with lights and noises, and forced to take mind-altering drugs, possibly PCP or LSD." This torture was clearly not designed to extract accurate information but rather to persuade Padilla that he really was the terrorist that the Cheney, et al, needed him to be.
Zacarias Moussaoui is another case in point:
Moussaoui is the alleged "20th hijacker" despite the fact that he originally denied any involvement in the 9/11 attacks. During his trial he exhibited clear signs of mental illness. Asked by his lawyer why he signed his guilty plea in April as "the 20th hijacker," Moussaoui replied: "Because everybody used to refer to me as the 20th hijacker and it was a bit of fun."
In one of the motions he filed with the court while he was representing himself, he claimed the FBI bugged his fan in an effort to frame him: "Where is my fan? It must be forensically examined before they kill me."
Moussaoui - Cheney's Pavlovian dog
He also stated: "I have a masters in International Bombing Business from the University Bombing Limited. My mentor is the Chief Executor of the World Terror Company."
When his mother travelled from France to attend his trial he ignored her. Such was the extent of the difference between the man in the dock and the man she remembered as her son, Moussaoui's mother broke down and declared "that is not Zachary," claiming that her normally fiery son must have been drugged to appear so sedate.
NBC news reporter Pete Williams suggested that Moussaoui had been fitted with a "stun belt" by his US government handlers to keep him 'on message'. According to Amnesty International:
When his mother travelled from France to attend his trial he ignored her. Such was the extent of the difference between the man in the dock and the man she remembered as her son, Moussaoui's mother broke down and declared "that is not Zachary," claiming that her normally fiery son must have been drugged to appear so sedate.
NBC news reporter Pete Williams suggested that Moussaoui had been fitted with a "stun belt" by his US government handlers to keep him 'on message'. According to Amnesty International:
"Officers can use it to psychologically threaten a prisoner, and it appears designed to humiliate and degrade a prisoner... Data from other electro-shock weapons indicate that the high pulse 50,000 volt shocks lasting eight seconds at a time could result in longer term physical and mental injuries."
And of course, we can't forget the 9/11 "mastermind" himself Khalid Sheik Mohammed, whose trial is ongoing. Officially Mohammed was captured by the CIA in Pakistan in 2002, however there are numerous problems with the account of his arrest:
