Torture claims 'forced US to cut terror charges' (Padilla - "dirty bomb")

[sabra]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,1650418,00.html?gusrc=rss

Torture claims 'forced US to cut terror charges'

· Dirty bomb evidence came from al-Qaida leaders
· CIA worried case would expose prison network

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Friday November 25, 2005
The Guardian


The Bush administration decided not to charge Jose Padilla with planning to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a US city because the evidence against him was extracted using torture on members of al-Qaida, it was claimed yesterday.
Mr Padilla, a US citizen who had been held for more than three years as an "enemy combatant" in a military prison in North Carolina, was indicted on Tuesday on the lesser charges of supporting terrorism abroad. After his arrest in 2002 the Brooklyn-born Muslim convert was also accused by the administration of planning to blow up apartment blocks in New York using natural gas.

The administration had used his case as evidence of the continued threat posed by al-Qaida inside America.

Yesterday's New York Times, quoting unnamed current and former government officials, said the main evidence of Mr Padilla's involvement in the plots against US cities had come from two captured al-Qaida leaders, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a leading al-Qaida recruiter. But the officials told the newspaper Mr Padilla could not be charged with the bomb plots because neither of the al-Qaida leaders could be used as witnesses as they had been subjected to harsh questioning and could open up charges from defence lawyers that their earlier statements resulted from torture. Officials also feared that their testimony could expose classified information about the CIA prison system in which the men were thought to be held.

[sniffa]

1. but we don't torture

[sabra]

2. it all depends on your definition of "torture"

it's scary to think what Bushco does consider Torture :-(

[annabanana]

4. and that's why we don't have that secret prison system

so we won't torture them there...

[tulsakatz]

3. so even if they do torture,

does this mean they can't use information from the torture for a prosecution? That's what it sounds like to me.....


The Bush administration decided not to charge Jose Padilla with planning to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a US city because the evidence against him was extracted using torture on members of al-Qaida

[nickgutierrez]

5. They might claim...

...that they can only not use evidence obtained by torture for US citizens. Which, of course, opens the "why the fuck was he there in the first place" can of worms, but they don't like to touch that one.

[tulsakatz]

9. I know these guys are not familiar with little things like facts.........

.....but it seems to me, if they can't use the info for purpose of prosecuting someone, then why waste the effort?

It's clear to me that torture does not produce the desired results since the person being tortured will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear just to stop the torture. So why make such a big deal about keeping torture if it brings no results?

It seems strange to me........

[guruoo]

17. a person under torture will tell you

anything they think you want to hear.

[54anickel]

6. What a tangled web they've created. Cheney says they must be

allowed to torture to extract important "information", but then, heaven forbid, that information comes up in a court case that might expose the torture or the secret CIA prisons, or call that "information" into question.

Instead, they must be allowed to detain people they've tortured, or that have been incriminated with information gathered through torture, indefinitely. Can't try them in a court of law or the dirty laundry gets aired. Can't ban torture or they loose the ability to extract important "intelligence information" - never mind if it's true or not. Cheney's got to have his "intelligence" to back the PNAC agenda.

Yeah, we all know how reliable they are in sorting fact from fiction from their track record. :eyes:

[Heddi]

7. Glaring mistake in article

Says he was held for 3 years in North Carolina---patently false. He was held at the brig in Charleston, SOUTH Carolina, about 4 blocks from where my uncle currently lives.

Is anything else in this article a slip up as well??

[applegrove]

8. That went well!

[daleo]

10. Amazing, simply amazing

More evidence that American torture is now routine.

[Thom Little]

11. The only question is why it took THREE YEARS!!!

So much for your Constitutional "right to a speedy trial."

[Disturbed]

12. Now they finally indicted him because...

the Bush Regime did not want his case to go to the SC. Why not?

[watrwefitinfor]

16. Why not?

Perhaps because they don't have the SC stacked completely to their satisfaction quite yet.

Wat

[Inland]

13. But why did they charge him at all, then?

Wasn't the entire point of Bush's imprisonment without trial because all the secrets we couldn't air in open court?

It's true that using the supposed alqaeda witnesses would reveal a secret that BUshites never want in the open: the permanent detention and torture of non-citizens overseas.

[madmark]

14. Pretty fucking scary; foriegn national turtured into implicating

american citizen who then is stripped of constitutional rights summarily by executive branch. From an anti-terrorist perspective would it not have been more tactical to surveil this guy to a) confirm he was involved in the activity, and b)if he was to roll up the whole sell and get additional higher ups. What did putting him away for three years do except violate the constitution.

[Old and In the Way]

15. Padilla's value has always been to provide an example of domestic

terrorism. As long as they could keep him under wraps, he was useful to this administration's justification of their GWOT. Now that his case is beginning to move into our legal system, his value as a terrorist is now greatly diminished. You'd think they'd have developed corroborating evidence in 3 years....the fact that they can't try him on the original charges tells us everything we need to know about the undemocratic inclinations of this administration.