How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed The Mind Of Jose Padilla (TRANSCRIPT of Democracy Now Interview)

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How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted August 17, 2007.

Jose Padilla has been found guilty in court and faces possible life in prison, but forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty explains after interviewing him that Padilla already paid the ultimate price through torture -- he's lost his mind. On Thursday, the jury in the Jose Padilla terror trial has found the American citizen guilty of conspiracy to support Islamic terrorism overseas. His sentencing is set for December 5 and he faces possible life in prison.

The FBI initially arrested him in Chicago in 2002 after he got off a plane from Europe. For a month he was held as a material witness. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft made a dramatic announcement -- the U.S. government had disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to set off nuclear dirty bombs inside the United States. At the center of the plot, Ashcroft alleged, was Padilla.

President Bush then classified Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, stripping him of all his rights. He was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in extreme isolation for forty three months.

The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over… He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live. His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

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Democracy Now! Co-Host Juan Gonzalez: We're joined by one of the few medical experts who has spent time with Padilla since his arrest five years ago. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty spent twenty-two hours interviewing Padilla last year to determine the state of his mental health. She concluded that he lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense. Dr. Angela Hegarty is assistant profession of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. She joins us today in our firehouse studio. How did you get involved in Jose Padilla's case?

Dr. Angela Hegarty: Well, his attorneys called me up. For many years, I have worked -- I had an interest in working with religious fundamentalists of all stripes, actually. And over the years, I had worked with lawyers in Miami, as well as elsewhere in the country, and I guess they heard about me that way. And they called me up, because essentially he wasn't really talking to them, and it was clear to them that something was very wrong, but they didn't know quite what it was at this point. And the initial goal was for me to come down and see if I could help build a rapport with him, help him really begin to act, you know, with his lawyers to advocate for himself to help them defend his case. He wasn't doing that. And so, I came down to spend some time with him.

Amy Goodman: And what did you find? Where did you first meet Jose Padilla?

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[Selatius]

1. He is Winston Smith.