The heart of our democracy is in danger, and most people seem to have no idea. Our government has already detained, and tortured, at least one American citizen without trial.

I’m talking about Jose Padilla, the New York native arrested in May 2002 and held, without justification or access to council, for more than three years. For three years and seven months the U.S. Military held an American citizen (who possessed all the constitutional right that you or I possess) in solitary confinement, under torturous conditions, without giving a reason.

Incredibly, after those three years, the charges of his indictment have nothing to do with Al-Qaida or a “dirty bomb” attack as he was first accused. The allegations that kept an American citizen in solitary confinement for almost four years without trial have been abandoned.

The indictment offers no evidence that Padilla was ever involved in planning a terrorist attack on American soil. In fact, it contains no evidence that he was involved with any sort of terrorist plot at all. It seems he played a small part in raising funds to send to money to Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo in the 1990s.

While raising funds for potential terrorists is certainly illegal, this is a far cry from the imminent threats the Bush administration held were the justification for trampling the fundamental rights of the constitution.

The doctrine of habeas corpus is the ability of a prisoner to demand justification for their detention in a court of law. Without it, anyone can be arrested and held indefinitely without ever going to trial.

Article One of our Constitution says explicitly, “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Unless there is an invasion or rebellion, citizens cannot be held indefinitely. Well, at least before the Bush Administration.

In a legal brief filed by Padilla’s lawyers, they describe three-and-a-half years of solitary confinement while Padilla was subjected to noxious fumes similar to tear gas, with the temperature oscillating between extremes. He was shaken and threatened to be cut and have alcohol poured in his wounds. He was hooded and, much like inmates in Guantanamo, forced to hold “stress positions” for hours on end.

An American citizen underwent all of this, without being charged with (much less convicted of) any crime at all. And though illegal at the time, all of the techniques used are now completely legal under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, recently passed by Congress.

At the beginning of his legal brief, Mr. Padilla’s lawyer placed a quote by Frederic Nietzsche that I think we would all be wise to consider. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”