Al Qaeda suspect "drugged" with flu shot -jailer

MIAMI, Feb 27 (Reuters) Former ''enemy combatant'' Jose Padilla was sometimes kept in a blacked-out cell without a mattress at a US military prison but the injection he thought was LSD was actually a vaccine, his former jailer testified on Tuesday.

''It was a flu shot,'' Sanford Seymour, technical director at the military brig yesterday, testified in a hearing to determine whether Padilla is mentally fit to stand trial on terrorism charges.

Padilla, a 36-year-old American, is scheduled to go to trial in April on charges he conspired with Islamist extremists to murder and maim people overseas.

Defense lawyers claim he was drugged and subjected to extreme isolation and sensory deprivation during the 3 1/2 years he was held in the brig before being charged in the civilian court. Doctors who examined him for the defense said that caused traumatic brain injuries that left Padilla mentally unfit for trial.

Seymour's testimony was the first public comment about the alleged al Qaeda operative's treatment by his military jailers, a description that in many ways echoes that described by foreign captives formerly held at the Guantanamo navy base.

But US District Judge Marcia Cooke strictly limited Seymour's testimony to a retelling of his hour-long phone conversation with a Bureau of Prisons psychologist who later deemed Padilla mentally fit for trial.

Seymour, a civilian director at the Naval Consolidated Brig in South Carolina, confirmed defense allegations that Padilla had no contact with any other prisoners. He said that ''for periods of time'' Padilla's cell windows were blacked out, he slept on a bare metal bunk with no mattress, his Koran was removed and he had no clock.

Seymour said the Bureau of Prisons doctor had not asked him to elaborate, so the court did not permit him to say how long those conditions lasted nor why they were imposed or by whom.

Nor was he permitted to explain why Padilla was required to wear shackles, black-out goggles and sound-blocking earphones when taken to see a dentist.

Seymour said he twice saw Padilla weeping in his cell but knew of no physical abuse inflicted on him. He said he had mistakenly told the Bureau of Prisons doctor that Padilla's interrogation lasted only four months, but was not allowed to say how long it actually lasted nor whether he had observed interrogations.

He said Padilla was at other times allowed to receive visits from an Islamic military cleric, and to go to an outdoor recreation area to shoot a basketball and sit in the sun.

Defense lawyers had alleged that noxious fumes were pumped into Padilla's cell. Seymour said those came from a nearby paper mill and ''We often had a nasty odor throughout the facility.'' Padilla bowed his head throughout the testimony and never looked at Seymour, who once described Padilla's behavior in the brig as docile like ''a piece of furniture.'' Padilla was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 upon his return from Egypt and Pakistan. President George W Bush ordered him held in military custody and his administration accused Padilla of plotting to set off a radioactive bomb.

He was never charged with that and while a challenge to Bush's authority to hold him without charge was pending in the Supreme Court, Padilla was indicted in Florida and transferred to civilian custody last year. He faces life in prison if convicted of providing money and recruits to Islamist extremists.

The mental competency hearing resumes on Wednesday. If the judge finds Padilla fit for trial, she would then consider a defense request to drop the charges because of ''outrageous government conduct.'' Reuters PDM VP0930