More Problems On The Terrorist Watch List & Court Cases

Padilla Defense Moves for Dismissal Due to Mistreatment, Delay

The Padilla case may just end up being dismissed on the same grounds that a jury acquitted O.J. Simpson... the government screwed the pooch in the handling of the case. In this case, the federal government has failed to provide a speedy trial, adequate access to lawyers and barriers to participation in a valid defense, abuse and mistreatment of the accused, and a failure to provide a prima facie case for probable cause. If any one of us had been treated this way we, too, would seek dismissal on constitutional grounds.

Defense attorneys for Jose Padilla, now formally accused of being an al Qaeda agent, moved this week to dismiss the charges against him based on allegedly illegal actions by the prosecution. Padilla's attorneys accuse the US government of subjecting him to severe physical abuse and threats, including sleep deprivation and stress positions, during his 3-and-a-half years in military custody in a South Carolina navy brig. The US Department of Justice has already said that it will not use any evidence procured during his detention by the military. In addition, Padilla's lawyers argue that the delay between his 2002 arrest and his charging have compromised the defense.

Padilla, a US citizen initially suspected of planning to set off a "dirty bomb" in the United States and classified as an "enemy combatant" subject to indefinite detention, was finally charged last year on unrelated terrorism charges. He was transferred to civilian custody in January of this year, when he pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial is scheduled to begin January 22.

Highlighting the errors in handling the entire "war on terrorism" national security effort is the GAO report on errors regarding the watch lists... and we wonder why the Bush gang doesn't want this folks to have a "normal" trial... It would reveal how incompetent they have been.

GAO Report Highlights Terrorism Watch List Errors

The US Government Accountability Office says that erroneous terror watch lists are delaying thousands of travelers moving in and through the United States. A GAO report on the lists published last Friday noted:

Although the total number of misidentifications that have occurred as a result of watch-list-related screening conducted by all frontline-screening agencies and airlines is unknown, Terrorist Screening Center data indicate that about half of the tens of thousands of potential matches sent to the center between December 2003 and January 2006 for further research turned out to be misidentifications... [This] total number of misidentified persons may be substantial in absolute terms, [but] it likely represents a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of individuals screened each year.

GAO acknowledged that in some instances "travelers have missed flights."

People with names that computer-driven algorithms match with those found on the watch lists are delayed and questioned by officials, often at border checks and airport check-ins. Requests to be removed from the lists, currently numbering over 30,000, are processed by only one agency, the Transportation Security Administration.

A July study by the Department of Homeland Security suggested that the watch list system was inefficient. The US Department of Justice reported last year that the list was missing some names, was based on incomplete and inaccurate information, and mischaracterized the danger posed by nearly 32,000 suspects who are not designated as targets of significant security action.