Government may reveal detention tactics (Padilla case)

Today's highly publicized hearing about the competency of terror defendant Jose Padilla may be focused on his mental fitness to stand trial in April. But it's really about his defense lawyers' ploy to explore -- and expose -- for the first time how the one-time ''enemy combatant'' was treated in military custody for more than three years.

Padilla's legal team will try to prove that the U.S. citizen who once lived in Broward suffered so much from being tortured at a Navy brig that he cannot assist them at trial. They will have an unprecedented opportunity to question Defense Department officials with direct knowledge of Padilla's military detention in South Carolina before his transfer to Miami.

But prosecutors will try to stop that kind of inquiry, which they view as trespassing into forbidden terrority. Indeed, they have so stridently argued that Padilla's prior military detention remain secret that a judge recently invoked Shakespeare to scold them. ''Methinks the lady doth protest too much,'' U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke said last Friday, before ordering several military officials to testify.

.......

Legal experts say the U.S. government's motives are clear: It has everything to lose and nothing to gain by disclosing Padilla's past as an enemy combatant from June 2002 to November 2005.

''The government doesn't want anything about his criminal case to be connected to his military detention,'' said Steve Vladeck, a University of Miami associate law professor, who once challenged Padilla's military detention in a U.S. Supreme Court brief.

``In the worst-case scenario, either the allegations about the government's conduct of torture are true, or Padilla is a straw man -- what they're keeping secret isn't really that significant.''


http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/16753008.htm

I seem to recall President Stupidhead saying that people with something to hide are usually doing something wrong. For once, the head of the most secretive administration ever may have actually let the truth slip out. In a period of shameful acts by our government, this is one act of particular shamefulness. But I suspect it will have plenty of competition for the most shameful as more and more of the Bush administration's misconduct is dragged out into the light.

Expert testifies Padilla not competent to stand trial
MIAMI (CNN) -- Accused terrorism supporter Jose Padilla suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after his years of military imprisonment and is not mentally competent to stand trial, an expert witness testified Thursday.

"He lacks the capacity to assist his defense counsel in this case," declared forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty in a Miami federal courtroom.

The doctor said the U.S.-born Padilla exhibits problems stemming from from his more than three years of confinement in a Navy brig, where he was held as an enemy combatant.

Federal prosecutor John Shipley sought to chip away at the medical expert's views, pointing out that "Padilla's raw test scores for post-traumatic stress syndrome were zero." --From Justice Producer Terry Frieden (Posted 5:23 p.m.)

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/02/22/thursday/index.html