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December 4, 2006 at 17:12:15

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The destruction of Jose Padilla

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By Stephen Soldz (about the author)     Page 1 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com     Permalink

For OpEdNews: Stephen Soldz - Writer

The New York Times today gives a glimpse of the systematic destruction of a human being as they describe the routine treatment of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, held for years without charges as an "enemy combatant" until the government, on the eve of a crucial court hearing challenging their ability to hold him without charges, decided to charge him after all.

The Times article describes the total isolation he was held in for three and a half years, before being charged:

One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.


That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.

"Today is May 21," a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. "Right now we're ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant."

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla's bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla's legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla's cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.


This treatment as he was taken to the dentist was in order to continue the treatment that was his fate in his cell, day-in and day-out for months on end:

In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months. Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla 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."


Was this treatment because Padilla was violent, a threat to the guards or to others? Evidently not:

One of Mr. Padilla's lawyers, Orlando do Campo, said, however, that Mr. Padilla was a "completely docile" prisoner. "There was not one disciplinary problem with Jose ever, not one citation, not one act of disobedience," said Mr. do Campo, who is a lawyer at the Miami federal public defender's office.

In his affidavit, Mr. Patel (another attorney) said, "I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla's temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of 'a piece of furniture.' "


Rather than any necessity to control him, Jose Padilla experienced the total isolation that is at the core of the U.S. government's decades-under-development program of psychological torture. According to Padilla's attorneys:

"his interrogations... included hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of 'truth serums.'"


Compare this with Alfred McCoy's description of the CIA's psychological torture techniques:

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http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/

Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology (more...)
 

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
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Response to an email who says he's an "American First" by Rob Kall on Tuesday, Dec 5, 2006 at 7:36:06 AM
Barbarism by Stephen Soldz on Tuesday, Dec 5, 2006 at 7:48:59 AM
Reply to Stephen by Keith Asbell on Tuesday, Dec 5, 2006 at 6:21:39 PM
Muslim hater? by Keith Asbell on Tuesday, Dec 5, 2006 at 6:02:49 PM
Reply to Rob by Keith Asbell on Tuesday, Dec 5, 2006 at 6:22:48 PM

 
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