"If the Law Does Not Protect Jose Padilla . . . It Protects No One"

Well duh.

"If the Law Does Not Protect Jose Padilla . . . It Protects No One"

In February, a federal district court in South Carolina dismissed our lawsuit on behalf of American citizen Jose Padilla against Donald Rumsfeld and other current and former officials, saying the former Secretary of Defense was entitled to "qualified immunity" for his role in the arbitrary detention and torture of Padilla. Today we appealed that dismissal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

As you might recall, Padilla was arrested in March 2002, held without charge for four years in a South Carolina military brig and without access to a lawyer for two years, and was tortured to the point that brig authorities described his behavior (or lack thereof) as "like a piece of furniture." The Bush administration first claimed that Padilla was plotting with al-Qaeda to detonate a radiological “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city, but no evidence of such a plot has ever been presented.

Of course the government has given itself all the powers to arrest anyone in the US, without charges, send them to Gitmo or some secret prison in Europe-Middle-East-Africa and torture them for years...

reply to post by Vitchilo


Thanks for posting this up I've never even heard of the guy. If there's any threads on ATS about him I somehow missed them all, the torture alone is going to be very crippling for him.

Wasn't he convicted of a thought crime?

Anyway, anybody could be the next Padilla. It just depend on how our government continues to define the ever changing term "terrorist."