Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, says Padilla's experience in the brig has left members of his family stunned and frightened. "People who have known him and loved him before his military detention don't feel they can even bear to see him because he is so clearly mentally ill."

In 2002, the Justice Department produced a "torture" memo stating that victims would have to experience pain equivalent to organ failure to prove torture.

"The development of a mental disorder such as post-traumatic stress disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression, which can last a considerable period of time if untreated, might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement" to prove torture, the memo says.

The doctors say Padilla's psychological condition exceeds even the high standard for mental damage set by the 2002 torture memo.

"If you would expect a person to become so deranged as to become psychotically terrified, to me that constitutes torture."

Was he not mental in the first place being a member of the Al Qaeda.

We don't know...because they screwed him up so bad. This is an American citizen after all. Juts because he is of Puertorican decent does not mean he should be treated that way.

He was alleged to be a member of al-Qaeda, but they messed him of so good, that the deep-sixed their case down the toilet.