Happy Thanksgiving, Jose Padilla

Happy Thanksgiving, Jose Padilla
By Stephen F. Rohde
t r u t h o u t | Letter

Thursday 24 November 2005

Dear Mr Padilla:

This Thanksgiving, I'm sure you have a lot to be thankful for.

After all, this Thanksgiving you'll be in a prison cell in Miami, Florida, rather than the Navy brig in South Carolina where you've been held incommunicado by the US government since June 9, 2002, when President George W. Bush signed a military order designating you as an "enemy combatant" for being "associated with al Qaeda," and asserting the unreviewable power to hold you indefinitely, without charges and without lawyers.

I'm sure you're thankful now that the US Attorney in Miami has filed specific charges against you, alleging that you conspired to commit certain crimes overseas (but never alleging you were a member of al Qaeda and never alleging you were planning any crimes in the United States), rather than having then-Attorney General John Ashcroft tell the world when you were arrested at O'Hare Airport that you were planning to set off a "dirty bomb" in the United States.

I'll bet you're thankful that now you will have lawyers who can invoke American law to investigate and defend you against those charges, instead of having the Justice Department release an affidavit from a mid-level Pentagon official, quoting hearsay from unnamed sources, alleging that you were planning to detonate a "dirty bomb," although the "plot" was "still in the initial planning stages" and "there was no specific time set for the operation to occur" and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged that he "didn't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and [your] coming in here obviously to plan further deeds" and that the government admitted that the information provided by the unnamed sources "may be part of an effort to mislead or confuse US officials" and that one of the sources had "recanted some of the information that he had provided" and that later press reports indicated that one of the sources identified you after being subjected to "waterboarding," a form of torture in which the suspect is made to think he is drowning.

I'm sure you are thankful for the day in 2003 when the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the government had no authority to hold you, an American citizen, as an "enemy combatant," despite the fact that you still had to remain in that Navy brig as your case was appealed to the US Supreme Court.

And I'll bet you were thankful on April 28, 2004, when on the evening of the same day your case was argued in the Supreme Court, CBS News released the horrible photographs of the torture taking place in Abu Ghraib, alerting people to the dangerous and lawless lengths to which the Bush administration would go in its War on Terrorism.

I know you were thankful when the Justice Department called a press conference at the very time that the High Court was considering your case, to announce that you were not really being held for all that stuff about a "dirty bomb" but rather because they said you were planning to blow up apartment buildings in the United States by using natural gas.

I'm sure you were thankful that Fred Korematsu, who had the courage to challenge the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, filed an amicus brief in your favor in which he warned: "Time sometimes reveals the unforgivable nature of our actions. Many of our country's darkest episodes have occurred when we have failed to protect civil liberties during exigent times of war or in the name of national security."

You were no doubt thankful when you heard that on June 28, 2004, the High Court had ruled in the case of Yaser Hamdi, also an American citizen, who was captured in Afghanistan, that the government had no authority to indefinitely hold American citizens as "enemy combatants" and had to charge or release Mr. Hamdi (they later released him), despite the fact that, by a 5-4 vote in your case, the Court refused to apply the same principle to you because it found that you should have filed your case in South Carolina, not New York, and should have named the commander of the brig where you were being held, not his boss Donald Rumsfeld; but at least the dissenting Justices criticized the majority for not reaching the merits of your case since it involved "nothing less than the essence of a free society."

And I'm confident that you are thankful for the tireless and brilliant work that many attorneys have devoted to your defense, including Donna Newman, Andrew Patel, Jonathan Freiman, Jenny Martinez, David DeBruin, William Hohengarten, Matthew Hersh, Duane Pozza and Scott Wilkens, as well as the organizations that have spoken out on your behalf including the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and so many others, together with grassroots groups you may not have heard of such as Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.

And I'm sure that one day when you learn what has been going on during your illegal detention for the last three and a half years, you will be thankful for the millions of people who have known from the start that what the Bush administration has done to you is un-American and who will never forget the words of Judge Learned Hand who wrote that "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."

Very truly yours,
Stephen F. Rohde Esq.

Stephen F. Rohde is a past president of the Southern California ACLU and co-founder of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.