How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted August 17, 2007.

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.

Up until last year the Bush administration maintained it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever. But when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padila out of military custody to face criminal conspiracy charges.

On January 3, 2006 the government charged him and two others with criminal conspiracy. The government claims Padilla, along with his mentor, Adham Amin Hassoun, and Hassoun's colleague, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, conspired to commit murder abroad and to provide material support toward that goal.

Since May the men have been on trial in Miami. According to the Miami Herald, the overall case against Padilla is riddled with circumstantial evidence. Much of the case is built around an alleged form Padilla filled out to attend an al-Qaeda training camp.

Prosecutors have no introduced no evidence of personal involvement by Padilla in planning or carrying out any violent acts. There is no mention of Padilla -- plotting to set off a dirty bomb.

Questions have also been raised about whether Padilla was mentally fit to stand trial. His lawyers and family say he has become clearly mentally ill after being held in isolation.

Democracy Now! Co-Host Juan Gonzalez: We're joined by one of the few medical experts who has spent time with Padilla since his arrest five years ago. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty spent twenty-two hours interviewing Padilla last year to determine the state of his mental health. She concluded that he lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense. Dr. Angela Hegarty is assistant profession of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. She joins us today in our firehouse studio. How did you get involved in Jose Padilla's case?

Dr. Angela Hegarty: Well, his attorneys called me up. For many years, I have worked -- I had an interest in working with religious fundamentalists of all stripes, actually. And over the years, I had worked with lawyers in Miami, as well as elsewhere in the country, and I guess they heard about me that way. And they called me up, because essentially he wasn't really talking to them, and it was clear to them that something was very wrong, but they didn't know quite what it was at this point. And the initial goal was for me to come down and see if I could help build a rapport with him, help him really begin to act, you know, with his lawyers to advocate for himself to help them defend his case. He wasn't doing that. And so, I came down to spend some time with him.

Amy Goodman: And what did you find? Where did you first meet Jose Padilla?

Dr. Hegarty: Well, I first met Mr. Padilla in the Miami detention center, where he is held under special conditions in a conference room with a double mirror. And we spent twenty-two hours in that room together.

Gonzalez: And how did he react to you initially, because obviously after being in isolation and then with -- he has not had a good relationship with his lawyers, as I understand, for quite a while, but how did he react to you?

Dr. Hegarty: Well, he really didn't want to talk to a psychiatrist at all. He didn't want to be evaluated at all. He was incredibly anxious. I remember the first day, after about the first hour, he smiled for a moment and said, you know, this really isn't as bad as he thought it would be. He obviously was very, very anxious.

And in the course of the interview, he revealed to me that he essentially had been told that if he relayed any of what had happened to him, his experiences, people would quote/unquote "know he was crazy." And he was very upset by this and very disturbed by it, and it's just that his level of being so disturbed suggested to me that there was something more, but, you know, asking further questions, he wouldn't reveal it to me.

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Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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