US citizen Padilla guilty of aiding Al-Qaeda

Jesus H Christ on a unicycle. I saw this coming as did most of you. The fucking government is going to destroy José Padilla if its the last thing Bush does.

A federal jury on Thursday found US citizen Jose Padilla guilty of aiding Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terror network and conspiring to commit murder outside the United States.

And don't get me wrong. Bush is entirely responsible for this.

I wonder how the jury members will sleep. Absolutely nothing I've read over the last few months was anything except sympathetic of José. Everyone believed the guy was tortured into a vegetative state and needed mental care, not incarceration.

Previous posts.

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I'll beat this dead horse as long as necessary

Anonymous Liberal picks up the Padilla story.

Marty Lederman highlights a truly stunning document, a government declaration submitted to a federal court back in 2003 in defense of Jose Padilla's processless incommunicado detention. In it, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, argues that permitting Padilla any process whatsoever would interfere with the government's goal of convincing Padilla that he has no hope of ever being freed.

And that, my dear friends is how you break a person and turn them into a vegetable. But, hey, its in an effort to keep you and I safe, right?

Don't get me wrong. If Padilla is guilty of the charges leveled at him I'm all for trying him and, if found guilty, imprisoning him. If...he were mentally healthy. But this guy is completely lost and needs mental health care, not another cell.

Referring to beating a dead horse is both metaphorical and literal as I've posted about this poor man many times. A quick Google® search for "Padilla" on SPIIDERWEB™ generated 25 hits.

Must read IMHO

I've posted several times about the US government's unmerciful treatment of José Padilla. Don't go to the (read more) link unless you have a strong stomach.

They're gonna fry this guy who they've turned into a vegetable.

Jesus!

Need proof? Try here, here and here. I could go on, but am too lazy. Search the other entries your own self. Just search Padilla on SPIIDERWEB™. Muahahaha.

Ain't it great to be able to call yourself an American? It used to be something to be proud of. (deep sigh.)

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Judge Rejects Padilla Torture Argument

Will this poor man ever get justice? Under Bush? Stupid question.

A federal judge rejected a motion by alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla to dismiss terrorism charges against him over claims he was tortured in U.S. military custody. The ruling removes one of the last major obstacles to the start of Padilla's trial next week.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke stressed in a 12-page order filed late Monday that she was not passing judgment on the torture allegations. Rather, she said the effort to dismiss the case for "outrageous government conduct" was faulty on legal grounds.

Padilla's lawyers claim that during the 3 1/2 years Padilla was held as an "enemy combatant" at a Navy brig he was routinely subjected to harsh treatment and torture.

He claimed that he was forced to stand in painful stress positions, given LSD or some other drug as a "truth serum," subjected to loud noises and noxious odors, and forced to endure sleep deprivation, extreme heat and cold and harsh lights.

The Pentagon and Justice Department have repeatedly denied those claims. Officials with the brig in Charleston, S.C., said during earlier testimony before Cooke that Padilla, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, was not mistreated, though they acknowledged occasional removal of the mattress in his cell and of his copy of the Quran.

Why don't I feel sorry for the 15 Brits detained by Iran?

Padilla? Check here, here and here.

I apologize for the image quality, but I seriously doubt the fucking government hires good professional photographers to record their mistreatment of detainees.

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Must read IMHO

Trust me. I'm never wrong. A snippet.

The presiding judge in the José Padilla case has held that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy trial does not protect American citizens from being indefinitely incarcerated by the Pentagon.

Padilla had filed a motion to dismiss the case on the ground that the federal government had denied him his right to a speedy trial. Padilla has been in custody since May 2002 and his trial, which is scheduled to begin in April, is not being held until some five years later.

From May 2002 until January 2006, Padilla was held in U.S. military custody as an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terror.” In January 2006, the Pentagon chose to transfer custody of Padilla to the U.S. Justice Department, which had indicted Padilla on terrorism charges in U.S. District Court. (Ever since 9/11, U.S. officials have had the option of treating people suspected of terrorism either as “enemy combatants” or as federal-court defendants.)

Last Friday, the presiding judge in the case, Marcia Cooke, denied Padilla’s motion to dismiss. The judge held that when a person, including an American citizen, is held in custody by the Pentagon as an “enemy combatant,” the time doesn’t start running with respect to his right to a speedy trial. It begins running, she held, only when he becomes part of the federal criminal-justice system.

Gee, I wonder if the judge’s reasoning applies to the rest of the Bill of Rights as well. Maybe the First Amendment doesn’t apply if it’s the Pentagon that is suppressing speech and assembly as part of its perpetual “war on terror.” Or maybe the Second Amendment prohibits only the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), not the Pentagon, from seizing guns from the American people, as it is doing as part of the “war on terror” in Iraq.

Our 18th-century American ancestors would have found Judge Cooke’s ruling to be ludicrous. If a military department of government is exempt from the restrictions of the Bill of Rights, then the entire executive branch is exempt for the obvious reason: Whenever the government wants to exempt itself from the Bill of Rights, all it has to do is employ the military to do the dirty deed. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect the American people from the federal government, not a particular department of the federal government.

So, how comfortable are you under your new dictatorship? Cuba? How quaint. But their dictatorship is different from yours, right?

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