Coming back to bite them

Via TalkLeft, it seems that the US government's policy of torture by proxy may be coming back to bite them. After three and a half years of detention without charge as an "enemy combatant", Jose Padilla is finally facing terrorism charges in open court. However, his lawyer has filed a motion to throw out key evidence, on the grounds that it is fruit of the poisonous tree. The reason the tree is poisonous? Torture.

A lawyer for alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla is asking a judge to throw out key evidence, saying the warrant for his arrest was based on statements from one source who claims he was tortured and another who was heavily medicated.

The statements were cited in an FBI affidavit "that distorted the facts in an apparent disregard for the truth," attorney Andrew Patel said in court papers filed late last week.

One of the witnesses cited by the FBI was Benyam Mohammed, who was held as a "ghost detainee" by the US and shuttled back and forth between Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan for interrogation and torture. In Pakistan, he was beaten, hung from the ceiling, and threatened with a firearm. In Morocco, he was also burned with acid - and worse:

They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they'd electrocute me. Maybe castrate me.

They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. At first I just screamed ... I was just shocked, I wasn't expecting ... Then they cut my left chest. This time I didn't want to scream because I knew it was coming.

One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. "I told you I was going to teach you who's the man," [one] eventually said.

They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists.

Naturally, he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear. And they were fairly specific - saying that he would testify against Jose Padilla as well as "Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, Abu Zubaidah and Ibn Sheikh al-Libi". They'd even gone to the courtesy of reasing him his "testimony" before torturing him, so he could repeat it back to them.

"Evidence" like this should not be allowed near a courtroom. It is less than worthless, and it poisons everything it touches. And those who arranged for the evidence to be collected - who had Mohammed flown to Morocco so he could be tortured - should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Meanwhile, in a kafkaesque twist, Padilla is being denied access to his own statements, on the basis that they are classified. Worse, his lawyers, who are allowed to view the statements, are forbidden from discussing them with their client, despite the fact that they will be used as evidence at his trial. This effectively cripples their ability to question the "evidence" and mount a defence - but somehow I suspect that that's the point...