Tape of Padilla Interrogation Is Missing
March 9th, 2007Via: AP:
A videotape showing Pentagon officials’ final interrogation of al- Qaida suspect Jose Padilla is missing, raising questions about whether federal prosecutors have lost other recordings and evidence in the case.
The tape is classified, but Padilla’s attorneys said they believe something happened during that interrogation that could explain why Padilla does not trust them and suspects they are government agents.
Padilla attorney Anthony Natale said in court papers that the March 2, interrogation at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., could contain information the government conveyed to Padilla that “directly impacts upon his relationship with his attorneys.”
Prosecutors and the Pentagon have said they cannot find the tape despite an intensive search.
Authorities made 88 video recordings of Padilla being interrogated during the 3 1/2 years he was held at the brig as an “enemy combatant,” officials said. Eighty-seven tapes have been given to the defense, leaving only the last session unaccounted for.
“I don’t know what happened to it,” Pentagon attorney James Schmidli said during a recent court hearing.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke was incredulous that anything connected to such a high-profile defendant could be lost.
“Do you understand how it might be difficult for me to understand that a tape related to this particular individual just got mislaid?” Cooke told prosecutors at a hearing last month.
Now they’re just laughing at us all. It’s like a slap in the face and a delcaration that there are no limits to what they will do, even out in the open. Where’s the accountability?
I dont believe for ONE second that the tape is ‘missing’. Destroyed or hidden is more like it.
Anyone that STILL believes we live in a free society,a democracy…is asleep to the reality of our country today.
The Court system in the U.S. is a crock . . . if you did this as a criminal defense attorney (“gee Judge I lost that evidence . . .) you would be found in contempt and put in jail. In U.S. courtrooms with few exceptions, reactionary/far right state functionaries – – generally ex-prosecutors with no defense or civil trial experience (often religious fundamentalists), are the “judges”. This is true in State and Federal Court – – the result in my experience is that they generally operate as the “second prosecutor” in the courtroom contrary to how things are portrayed in the mainstream media or in abberation cases that are played up . . . abandon all hope when you are accused of a crime in U.S. courts, innocence is meaningless, the cops lie and the judge does everything he can to gut your case . . . Average citizens are clueless until they enter the “system” and then they are terrified . . . With the coming “military tribunals” things will not be improving . . .