Why is the New York Times covering up the torture of Jose Padilla?

Lawyers for Padilla filed a motion October 4 asking a US District Court judge in Miami to throw out charges against their client on the grounds of “outrageous government conduct.” The 20-page brief spells out the various means by which Padilla was mentally and physically tortured by American authorities. The lawyers quite rightly call the prospect of his prosecution “an abomination,” describe his treatment as “a blot on this nation’s character, shameful in its disrespect for the rule of law” and argue that it “should never be repeated.”

The news of the motion to dismiss all charges, as well as the allegations of torture, did not receive serious coverage in the American media, much less enter into the election campaign as an issue. Relatively brief articles, based on wire service reports, appeared in the media the week the motion was filed, including in the Washington Post. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel printed a somewhat longer piece. The Bloomberg news service ran a story on October 19. The New York Times published nothing in October.

A new round of Associated Press, United Press International and Reuters stories on the torture allegations appeared at the end of October. On November 2, four weeks after the original report, the New York Times published an Associated Press account, which also appeared in dozens of other newspapers. The Times discreetly placed the item on page 19. The 334-word piece reports some of the lawyers’ charges contained in “court papers filed last month.”

Let us remind our readers of the essential facts of the case. An American citizen, Jose Padilla, was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport May 8, 2002 as he stepped off a plane from Zurich, Switzerland. He was declared a material witness in connection with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and transported to New York City, where he was appointed legal counsel.

A month later, based on the sensational allegation that Padilla was an “Al Qaeda agent” who had planned to detonate a “dirty bomb” on US territory, Bush declared him an “enemy combatant” and he was transferred to the naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina. As an “enemy combatant,” Padillla was denied legal counsel and virtually all contact with the outside world. The Bush administration maintained that he could be held indefinitely without any charges ever being lodged against him and without any recourse to the courts. Several federal courts rejected in whole or part this assertion of police state powers by the Bush White House.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/nov2006/nyt-n03.shtml