from Democracy Now!, via AlterNet:
How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose PadillaBy Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted August 17, 2007.
Jose Padilla has been found guilty in court and faces possible life in prison, but forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty explains after interviewing him that Padilla already paid the ultimate price through torture -- he's lost his mind.On Thursday, the jury in the Jose Padilla terror trial has found the American citizen guilty of conspiracy to support Islamic terrorism overseas. His sentencing is set for December 5 and he faces possible life in prison.
The FBI initially arrested him in Chicago in 2002 after he got off a plane from Europe. For a month he was held as a material witness. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft made a dramatic announcement -- the U.S. government had disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to set off nuclear dirty bombs inside the United States. At the center of the plot, Ashcroft alleged, was Padilla.
President Bush then classified Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, stripping him of all his rights. He was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in extreme isolation for forty three months.
The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over… He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."
According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live.
His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations. .......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/59958/