A civil lawsuit (available here) was filed yesterday by Padilla (right),
the Brooklyn-born man detained for years as an "enemy combatant" before standing trial on terrorism charges in Miami. Also suing was Padilla's mother, Estela Lebron. Filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the region where Yoo (left) resides, the 2 sought to have Yoo held responsible for a host of violations of U.S. constitutional and statutory law (no international law is cited). Alleged:► denial of access to counsel and to court
► unconstitutional conditions of confinement
► unconstitutional interrogation
► unconstitutional military detention
► denial of freedom of religion
► denial of rights to information and association
► denial of due process
Plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment, nominal damages, and fees against Yoo, who, as an attorney in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel drafted legal memoranda (as I've discussed here) that outlined justifications for many aspects of the post-9/11 detention program to which Padilla was subjected.Representing plaintiffs are Natalie L. Bridgeman (left), a 2002 UCLA law graduate who has a solo practice in San Francisco, and 2 attorneys from the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale, the law school from which Yoo was graduated in 1992.
