The Count Of Monte Cristo

The New York Times has a chilling story about the treatment of Jose Padilla, the American who was held for years in isolation as an enemy combatant. The administration finally brought vague terrorism charges against him, rather than face a court decision on the President's right to indefinitely hold American citizens without charges.

The blogger Digby has a must-read piece on the subject.

It's quite likely that Jose Padilla was a bad guy, though not nearly as bad as John Ashcroft claimed him to be (in press conference, never in court.)

But this is America, and we have rules and laws, and stories like this should be part of dystopian fiction, not our nation's policy.

In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months. Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla was held alone in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, “as part of an interrogation plan.”

Mr. Padilla’s situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in the military justice system.

Philip D. Cave, a former judge advocate general for the Navy and now a lawyer specializing in military law, said, “There’s nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement.”

Read Digby.