Padilla "terrorism support trial" unravels

by wsws (reposted)

Sat, Jun 30, 2007 7:50AM

Saturday, June 30, 2007 :The US government’s "terrorism support trial" against Jose Padilla and two acquaintances, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, is rapidly unraveling as the prosecution continued with its case this week. Even though US District Judge Marcia Cooke has let the prosecution introduce irrelevant evidence and proceed despite procedural violations, it is clear the prosecution is grasping at straws to make a case against the accused.

Padilla, a US citizen, was arrested at O’Hare Airport in Chicago in May 2002, imprisoned and held without charges or access to a lawyer, in breach of fundamental democratic rights. The Bush administration declared that Padilla was an imminent terrorist threat to the US, planning to explode radioactive "dirty bombs" in US cities. Padilla has stated that he was tortured for three and a half years in a US military brig—held in total solitary confinement, often in painful stress positions, deprived of sleep, and force-fed psychoactive drugs such as LSD and PCP meant to act as "truth serums."

The trial of Padilla, whom the prosecution had verbally downgraded from a "terrorist" to a "terrorism support" suspect while dropping any talk of a "dirty bomb" plot, began in May 2007. The proceedings have many times over justified an earlier assessment of Cooke, who euphemistically described the prosecution’s case as "light on facts."

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For more information: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/...

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