Videotape Offers a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation

[CTLawGuy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/us/04detain.html?hp&ex=1165208400&en=02ab7b458c838c22&ei=5094&partner=homepage

By DEBORAH SONTAG
Published: December 4, 2006
One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.

Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image

In the videotape, Mr. Padilla's feet were shackled. The date of the tape has not been disclosed.
That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.

“Today is May 21,” a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.”

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

(snip)
--------------------------------------

My gooodness, what these people do in our names! Bush and others responsible must be held accountable.