Per the Washington Post, “Judge throws out Padilla suit over alleged torture“:
CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit brought by a man convicted of plotting terrorism and who alleged he was tortured at a Navy brig in South Carolina, saying a trial would create “an international spectacle.”
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U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel ruled Jose Padilla, arrested as an enemy combatant, had no right to sue for constitutional violations and that the defendants in the case enjoyed qualified immunity.
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Padilla claimed he was illegally detained as an enemy combatant and then held in a brig near Charleston where he was tortured. His lawsuit named government and brig officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
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Padilla alleged he was tortured by being kept in darkness and isolation, deprived of sleep and religious materials, and kept from family and attorneys
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“A trial on the merits would be an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America’s present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges,” [Gergel] wrote.
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Wizner [litigation director for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation] said the court has ruled “that Donald Rumsfeld is above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it.”
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But he warned “if the law does not protect Jose Padilla, it protects none of us, and the executive branch can simply label citizens enemies of the state and strip them of all rights — including the absolute right not to be tortured.”
I can remember when the American judicial system at least pretended that the shanda fur die goyim, the source of disgrace in front of our global neighbors, was grabbing and torturing people on suspicion of thought crimes… and then not even having the basic decency to admit that those people (even the ones guilty of, at a minimum, bad thoughts and violent intentions) might be entitled to a public airing of their grievances.
But, hey, Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs are getting distinctly unfriendly reviews, which some of the Media Village Idiots would no doubt argue means he’s suffered just as badly as some off-white slum kid condemned to a Supermax facility.
“Donald Rumsfeld is above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it”Post + Comments (62)