UC Berkeley lawyer who justified harsh treatment of detainees sued
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Military officials relied on John Yoo's writings in subjecting Jose Padilla to prolonged sensory deprivation, sleep interruption, stress positions and other techniques designed to break his will, Padilla's lawyers said in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Miami
The same lawyers filed a similar suit in South Carolina
"John Yoo was central to the justification and creation of the torture system," Jonathan Freiman, an attorney at a Yale Law School
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond
Yoo was unavailable for comment. In a 2006 book, "War by Other Means," he described working on a memo that led to Padilla's 2002 detention in a Navy brig, and also defended his August 2002 memo on interrogation methods that was cited in Friday's lawsuit.
That memo, written to then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, said legal prohibitions against torture applied only to the infliction of pain as severe as that caused by "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death." It also said the president may have the constitutional power to authorize torture of enemy combatants.
The Justice Department repudiated the memo in 2004, when Gonzales was up for confirmation as attorney general. Before the document surfaced, the official who signed it, Jay Bybee, Yoo's Justice Department supervisor, was appointed by President Bush to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco
Padilla, a U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, was arrested in Chicago
He was declared an enemy combatant by Bush and held in a brig without charges for 3 1/2 years, then charged with taking part in an unrelated conspiracy to provide money and supplies to Islamic extremist groups, with no reference to the alleged radioactive bomb. After prosecutors offered evidence of a document linking Padilla to an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan
Padilla's lawyers have cited his treatment in the brig in an unsuccessful attempt to dismiss the charges and in opposing a life sentence sought by the government. Prosecutors say his treatment in military custody was irrelevant to the case and deny that he was tortured.
Friday's civil suit, filed on behalf of Padilla and his mother, Estela Lebron, said he had been subjected to physical and mental abuse throughout his confinement. He was kept in a blacked-out cell, hooded whenever he was let out, prevented from sleeping by loud noises, shackled or forced to stand in painful positions for long periods, exposed to extreme heat, cold and noxious fumes, threatened with death and denied access to lawyers, relatives or anyone else except his guards and interrogators, the suit says.
Padilla's lawyers said government documents show that Defense Department officials relied on Yoo's advice, in the August 2002 memo and other writings that "purported to provide legal justification for unprecedented and illegal detention and interrogation techniques." Although Padilla's lawyers say he suffered serious psychological harm and violations of numerous constitutional rights, the suit seeks only token damages of $1, along with a declaration that Yoo acted illegally.
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