Pentagon to judge: My dog ate my interrogation video

Lawyers for Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen that Bush declared an "enemy combatant", say that the psychological torture that Padilla suffered while in detention has driven him to the point where he is not mentally competent to stand trial.

Interestingly, a video of his interrogation in a U.S. military brig, which a judge had ordered into evidence, seems to have mysteriously disappeared. The Feds lost the smoking-gun video. Oops.

According to an article on Newsweek's website:

-----

A federal judge ruled today that suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla is mentally competent, paving the way for his long-delayed case to proceed to trial, at long last, in April. But the ruling by U.S. Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami leaves open what may be more intriguing questions than those surrounding the defendant's mental health: what happened to a crucial video recording of Padilla being interrogated in a U.S. military brig that has mysteriously disappeared?

The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It contains a video of the last interrogation session of Padilla, then a declared "enemy combatant" under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. But in recent days, in the course of an unusual court hearing about Padilla’s mental condition, a government lawyer disclosed to a surprised courtroom that the Defense Intelligence Agency—which had custody of the evidence—was no longer able to locate the DVD. As a result, it was not included in a packet of classified DVDs that was recently turned over to defense lawyers under orders from Judge Cooke.

The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government's highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case. "This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of Padilla. "It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused."

-----
[Read more.]

Ten years ago, who would have thought that this could happen in the United States of America?

Another good article about the mental health issue in the Padilla case can be found in the March 12th issue of The Nation. Check it out: A Trial for Thousands Denied Trial