September 20, 2011

In 2002, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was designated an ?unlawful enemy combatant.? According to the Bush administration, Padilla was involved in an al-Qaeda plot to detonate a radiological bomb.

The evidence against Padilla consisted of accusations from two confessed terrorists, who implicated him after being tortured. A third "witness," Ethiopian refugee Binyam Mohammed, likewise named Padilla after being tortured extensively under CIA supervision by Moroccan secret police.

Padilla was never charged with involvement in the supposed dirty bomb plot. After several years of isolation, forced drugging and other abuse in military detention, Padilla was convicted of conspiring to ?support? terrorism abroad. The key evidence in that trial consisted of transcripts of innocuous conversations in which ? according to government ?experts? -- Padilla and Muslim acquaintances spoke in ?code? about terrorist activities. The trial judge excluded all evidence of Padilla?s torture, while allowing as evidence statements he made before being Mirandized.

On September 20, a federal appeals court panel vacated, by a 2-1 vote, Padilla?s 17-year prison sentence ? not because it was the product of a manifest miscarriage of justice, but because it was considered to be insufficiently severe.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.