A U.S. citizen once held as an enemy combatant and accused of ties to Al Qaeda is mentally unfit to stand trial as a result of his treatment in a U.S. military prison, doctors testified for the defense on Thursday. Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty told the court that Jose Padilla is unable to assist in his own defense and cannot tell his lawyers anything about the three and a half years he spent in the South Carolina military facility, or the time he spent in Afghanistan and Egypt, where the government alleges he conspired with Islamist terrorists. If asked to review taped conversations that will be used as evidence, he breaks into a sweat, hunches over and rocks back and forth, the doctors said. He hits a stone wall and his logic shuts down, said Hegarty, who examined Padilla in his Miami jail cell. His overwhelming anxiety interferes with his reasoning. Padilla, a former gang member and Muslim convert, is scheduled to go to trial in Miami in April on charges that he was part of a North American support cell that provided money and recruits to global Islamist extremists. He was arrested in 2002 and declared an enemy combatant. At the time, the government alleged Padilla had plotted to detonate a radioactive bomb inside the United States, but that claim has not been included in charges against him. Lawyers for Padilla challenged his initial detention without charge, which led to his transfer to a federal prison and his addition as a defendant to a preexisting terrorism support cell case. But Padilla s lawyers now argue that he is unfit to stand trial in the case because he was tortured and drugged while held at the military prison. Hegarty and a clinical forensic psychologist who examined Padilla for the defense, Dr. Patricia Zaph, said he was mentally impaired, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and convinced he should help the government rather than his own lawyers. A Bureau of Prisons doctor who examined him at the court s request, however, found him fit for trial. Prosecutors deny Padilla was abused and accuse the defense of raising the mental health issue in order to turn the proceedings into a referendum on his past treatment in military custody. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke has ordered some of Padilla s military jailers to appear in court for questioning about his treatment when the hearing resumes on Monday.
