Monday, December 04, 2006

Padilla blindfolded just to go to the dentist



We all know that the government claimed that U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was part of a 'dirty bomb' plot, and therefore held him with no charges for more than three years. We also know that after several courts ruled against them, they finally got a favorable court ruling and then quickly filed charges in order to prevent an appeal to the Supreme Court (sort of playing the game until the moment they were ahead and then taking the 'precedent' and jumping out.) However, there is no excuse for their putting a blindfold on him, just to go to the dentist for a root canal.

There are charges and countercharges in regard to how he is being treated right now. I'm not going to get into that go around. Suffice to say that this treatment is unwarranted, especially now that Padilla has been formally charged (though at least one charge has already been thrown out for lack of evidence and the judge has advised the government that some of the other charges are 'unnecessarily vague.'; We will see where that leads.)

If he is in fact guilty of a crime, then he should be tried like anyone else accused of a crime. Until then there is no reason to blindfold him so he won't find out where the dentist's office is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think even Hanibal Lector got blindfolded.

shrimplate said...

Did they also blindfold the dentist?

Eli Blake said...

Shrimplate:

Good one. Considering that they have to figure out how to get around the torture rules, they may have (I bet it wasn't that hard to talk them into letting him go, when it turned out he would need a root canal. But I bet they didn't tell the dentist to go heavy on the anaesthetic.)