Torture methods used by US interrogators since 9/11 are finally being put on trial. Jose Padilla, a former gang member who was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, was classified as an “enemy combatant” and taken to a Navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina. Padilla was tortured with sensory deprivation in a 9×7 foot cell with no natural light, clock, or calendar for 1,307 days. When leaving the cell he was forced to wear goggles and headphones. Padilla’s captors then brought the years of deprivation to an end with a sensory overload. They blasted him with harsh lights, sounds, and possibly injected him with LSD or PCP.

Padilla was set to be put on trial for allegedly being linked to a terrorist network, but his lawyers are arguing that the government-condoned tactics have driven him insane and unfit to stand trial. Padilla himself believes that his lawyers are “part of a continuing interrogation program” and views his captors as his protectors. His lawyers and two mental health experts agree that he lacks the ability to assist in his own defense. Padilla’s lawyers want to tell the court exactly what happened during the previous years. The prosecution is arguing that Padilla’s treatment is irrelevant, and that he is competent to stand trial.

US District Judge Marcia Cooke disagrees with the prosecution and is ordering several prison employees to testify on Padilla’s mental state. They will be questioned on how a man alleged by the government to have been engaging in elaborate terrorist plots is now, in the words of the staff, “like a piece of furniture.”

The same CIA sensory deprivation and overload techniques used against Padilla have been standard procedure for five years at Guantanamo Bay, as well as in Iraqi and Afghan prisons. James Yee, former Army Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, says there is an entire section at Gitmo called Delta Block for detainees who have been reduced to Padilla’s state or worse. “They would respond to me in a childlike voice, talking complete nonsense. Many of them would loudly sing childish songs, repeating the song over and over,” he said. Human Rights Watch exposed another US-run prison near Kabul where detainees had also been tortured to a delusional state.

The CIA and military now face a problem since they have known since the early 1960s the effects of such techniques. A 1963 declassified CIA manual states that “The deprivation of stimuli induces regression by depriving the subject’s mind of contact with an outer world and thus forcing it in upon itself.” The lesson has not been lost since last year’s Army field manual also reminds us that, “Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and anti-social behavior,” as well as “significant psychological distress.”

There is one reason Padilla’s case is being heard in a US court at all - he is a US citizen. Other “enemy combatants” who do not have US citizenship have been stripped of their right of habeas corpus by the Bush administration. Eventually, the administration’s lack of due process for Padilla was facing a Supreme Court challenge. Due to pressure, Padilla was finally charged with a crime, making him the only detainee thus far to face an ordinary US trial. If it is proven that the US government has deliberately drove Padilla insane, then the same is likely true for the hundreds, or likely thousands, of prisoners detained around the world.

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