Padilla News

On this day in 1998 Ginger Spice announced she was leaving the Spice Girls, surely a momentous occasion. I just got a new Holly Golightly CD. I'll review it later. It's a live recording of a show at Gina's At 3 from her tour last fall.
Anyway, on to important stuff. The Justice Department released a document of an apparent confession by Padilla about some apartment bombings. Although I think he is probably guilty of something I do not think the administration has raised any issue that would merit such a gross violation of his due process rights. This new document does little to change my opinion. I have two problems with this document. The first problem deal's with the confessions credibility. The second is whether the confession justifies the violation of Padilla's rights.
First what evidence do we have that Padilla said this besides the Justice Department's word? By releasing a document instead of an audio or video tape we have to take them at their word. There is no independent attorney there to verify these confessions. Padilla's own attorney cannot even see her client, so she cannot verify the confessions. This may be fine for a lot of people, but a significant number of people stopped trusting the administration a long time ago. This case has become a high profile example of the administrations violation of the basic due process rights of U.S. citizens. If the Mobb's Declaration(If this is your first time reading it pay special attention to footnote 1) was all the evidence they could produce it would be a big embarrassment for Ashcroft and the Administration. The lack of any independent verification of the confession damages the credibility of the report.
The next reason the report lacks credibility is because it only identifies Al Queda sources by numbers. How are we supposed to know that these are not the same sources from the Mobb's Declaration that were listed as unreliable and under the influence of drugs?
The most serious reason to question the confession's credibility is because it was obviously coerced. It was coerced because Padilla's due process rights have been completely ignored and after two years in jail he has little reason to believe he will ever be charged or allowed to see his attorney. He may believe that confessing to some conspiracy the administration feeds him is his only possible hope of someday ending his incarceration.
There is also the question of what happened to him while he was in custody. With continuing reports that prisoner abuse was more wide spread than just Abu Ghraib we must ask if it occurred in Padilla's case. Revelations that the administration approved methods such as water boarding indicate that there is a good chance that these techniques were used on Padilla. This raises a legitimate question as to whether Padilla was physically coerced into confessing.
The second issue I have is whether or not this merits violating his due process rights. Padilla could have been held in Chicago because of the $10,000 he did not declare when entering the country. At that point the FBI could probably have got a National Security Letter and tapped his phone, monitored his email account and tailed him. Cell Phones are great tracking devices. It does not appear that he could have rented several apartments and started to rig them to blow up without being caught. He could then have been tried and convicted without any bomb ever going off. He could have been held as a material witness if the list of contacts he was carrying did include the Al Queda operatives listed in the article. There were plenty of ways that the administration could have prevented the attacks that they allege he was going to commit without breaking the law.