Jose Padilla is an American citizen who was arrested on May 8, 2002 as a terrorist “enemy combatant” in Chicago and held until January 2006 in a South Carolina military facility without the right to trial or even a cursory court arraignment.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said at the time Padilla was intending to “build and explode a radiological device or ‘dirty bomb’ in the United States.” Only recently has Padilla been charged in U.S. court, and only for conspiring to act as a terrorist outside the U.S.

Padilla’s case is an example of the suspension of civil and human rights and fundamental law that has occurred in the U.S. This remains true in this case whether or not Padilla is guilty or innocent. The Jan. 27, 2007 march in Washington D.C. to shut down the U.S. occupation of Iraq also stands against this lawlessness.


--photo from The New York Times.

Poem for Jose Padilla

They tracked and seized him, locked him away—
a small-time wandering criminal—
announcing he had a “dirty bomb”
though for three years never brought him to trial.

He lived in a solitary soundproof cell
without a friend or lawyer to speak,
just interrogators. Bound and goggled
in transit, still could not hear nor see.

When he was finally arraigned
for other terrorism offenses,
his attorneys said he was insane
from deprivation of the senses.

Guilty or innocent—who knows?
A blank cell exists in his calm mind,
and there, a crow walks back and forth
chanting the named seconds of time.

Meanwhile society ticks on
as armies seek justice, count lives.
College students cram, doctors heal
and bill. On Friday, party time!

Empathy, like an endangered eagle,
circles above the tended fields
and roads, perches on crags--a glint
to spark automatons to feel.

Further Reading on Padilla

“Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation,” Sontag, Deborah. The New York
Times. 4 Dec. 2006. www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/us/04detain.html?
ex=1322888400&en=accb01df2436f791&ei=5090&partner=rssuser.

“Current Research: Jose Padilla,” Hardy Colleen. Critical Infrastructure Protection
Program at George Mason University. 10 April 2006.
cipp.gmu.edu/research/Padilla-0602Article.php.

“Jose Padilla: No Charges and No Trial, Just Jail,” Levy, Robert A. The Cato Institute.
21 Aug. 2003. www.cato.org/pub_display.php.