Details Emerge About Padilla’s Treatment in Confinement

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As you likely know, the trial of Chicago gang member and alleged terrorist Jose Padilla is going on now.

On Tuesday, his jailers were forced to testify about the conditions of Padilla’s secretive three-year-eight-month confinement in a naval brig as part of a hearing on whether or not Padilla is fit to stand trial; it is significant testimony because it’s the first time any of Padilla’s captors have been forced to speak publicly.

What was revealed:

– Padilla sometimes slept on a steel bunk without a mattress.

– The windows in Padilla’s 80-square-foot cell were blackened so no natural light was able to enter the cell.

– Padilla was given no timepiece, leading to an almost complete inability to tell time.

– The electric light in Padilla’s cell could only be activated by jailers and was frequently unavailable for unspecified reasons.

Padilla has alleged he was tortured while in military captivity. That has yet to be proven true or false. In fact, the hearing was limited in scope, and didn’t cover most aspects of Padilla’s detention, for example, how he was fed, how he was interrogated, etc.

In the hearing on Padilla’s competency to stand trial, government doctors and defense doctors differed on their evaluations of the Padilla’s mental health. Read the opinions in this New York Times story.

Mother Jones covered Padilla’s indictment after more than three years of detainment here, wondered if Padilla is anything more than the government’s perfect fall guy here, and discussed the plight of Padilla’s lawyer here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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