Hatred at Home: al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest

24. Atypical Psychosis

 24 Atypical Psychosis By the fall of 2004, the presidential campaign had hit full throttle in Ohio. Kerry, Bush, Cheney, and Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, made multiple stops across the state. On September 8, Kerry traveled to the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, the same place that Bush had made his case for the invasion of Iraq in 2002. In a sharp rebuke to the president, Kerry called the war a catastrophic choice that had cost $200 billion to date along with hundreds of American soldiers’ lives. “George W. Bush’s wrong choices have led America in the wrong direction on Iraq and left America without the resources we need here at home,” Kerry said. Two weeks later, Cheney and Edwards campaigned for two days in the state; Edwards concluded with visits to Cleveland and Cincinnati , while Cheney made stops near Columbus and Toledo. On September 23, Kerry spoke at a Columbus firehouse, while on Friday, September 24, Republicans announced Bush events the following Monday in southwest Ohio they predicted would draw tens of thousands of supporters.1 That same day, in Columbus, jailhouse guards moved Nuradin Abdi out of the mental health wing and into a regular housing unit. He was slowly starting to resemble his old self. He began to visit with his family again. “I thought you were all dead,” he told one of his brothers on a visit. His case had been transferred to the docket of U.S. District Court judge Algenon Marbley, and one of Marbley’s first acts was to order a second psychiatric evaluation for Abdi for mid-November.2 The presidential campaign wound down, but not without a last Ohio-related drama: at Kenyon College in tiny Gambier, about an hour northeast of Columbus, students waited in line for up to twelve hours to vote for Kerry after one of the precinct’s two machines malfunctioned. The lines were the longest in the nation and Atypical Psychosis  bolstered later allegations that Ohio ballots for Kerry were somehow sabotaged. Early the next morning, Ohio was finally called for Bush and the election was over. Back in Columbus, one week later, on November 11, 2004, Abdi was taken permanently off suicide watch.3 The doctor conducting Abdi’s second evaluation, psychiatrist Robert T. M. Phillips, started by reviewing the previous analysis of Abdi’s mental health. He went over the materials Marbley provided him and then evaluated Abdi on November 16, 17, and 18. He concluded on December 23, 2004, that Abdi was competent to stand trial. Phillips added a proviso: it was possible, he said, that rather than malingering, the legal phrase for making up an illness, Abdi had been suffering from some type of “atypical psychosis” in May and June, possibly a condition known as Ashanti psychosis. The symptoms of this condition, observed in people in Ghana and West Africa, bear some resemblance to Abdi’s behavior in Circleville and Tiffin. Subjects who fear they are being punished become frightened, then frenzied, then suffer hallucinations and are sometimes seen tearing off their clothes and eating their feces.4 Phillips’s finding was a victory for the government. But it was also moot in a way: with Abdi on the mend, it was a foregone conclusion he would have to face the charges against him. And that’s what his attorney was now preparing for, starting with the event at the heart of the case: Abdi’s warrantless arrest on the day after Thanksgiving . It was an act, Abdi’s attorney was ready to argue, that was illegal and without provocation. Born Paul Kenyatta Laws, Christopher Paul grew up in the old Columbus suburb of Worthington, the youngest of six children in one of the community ’s few African American families. Paul, pictured here in his 1984 high school yearbook, was regarded in high school as pleasant and polite, and was chiefly known as an excellent gymnast who went to state championships with his team. The FBI spent several years building a case against Christopher Paul before he was arrested on April 11, 2007, as he walked back to his apartment after prayers at a nearby mosque. Once indicted , he put up almost no defense and quickly agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in terrorist attacks. Franklin County Jail photo Iyman Faris arrived in Columbus in 1994 and found housing...