Padilla Verdict in one Hour in Miami

Just announced that a verdict reached and to be announced in an hour or so in Miami.

AKA: Abdullah Al Muhajir, Ibrahim Padilla.

http://intelwire.egoplex.com/padilla011104.html

Key Points:

Jose Padilla was arrested in May 2002 as he entered the U.S. at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. According to the State Department, Padilla applied for a replacement passport at the US Consulate General in Karachi, Pakistan, in February 2002. State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security investigated Padilla’s activities in Pakistan at the request of the consular official in Karachi, and Padilla’s travel to the U.S. was tracked as a result.

Padilla was apparently detained in part on the basis of information surrendered by Abu Zubaydah, a captured al Qaeda lieutenant who worked with Padilla in Pakistan. At the time of his arrest, Padilla was carrying about $10,000 in cash.

According to Zubaydah, Padilla had been tasked with finding radioactive material to build a radiological dispersion device, a so-called “dirty bomb.” Padilla was sent to the U.S. at the direct order of September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, according to numerous media reports.

In June 2003, Padilla was designated an enemy combatant at the order of President George W. Bush. As as result of this designation, he was removed from the U.S. criminal justice system, where he was being held as a material witness, and transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina. He has been held there since June 2002 without access to legal counsel or family visits. He has not been formally charged with a crime.

When Padilla was initially arrested, he was assigned to a court-appointed attorney named Donna Newman. After the enemy combatant designation, Newman sued to be allowed to see Padilla. The federal government opposed her request, arguing that allowing Padilla access to counsel would interfere with his interrogation, which the government claimed was a matter of national security. The government argued that the president was authorized to deny access to counsel on the basis of the enemy combatant designation and that the U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over Padilla due to the presidential order.

After losing the case in district court and on appeal, and being ordered to release Padilla to the civilian court system, the U.S. government announced that will request an expedited appeal to the Supreme Court, to be filed on or about Jan. 20, 2004.

Background:

Padilla was raised in Chicago, where he became involved in the gang scene at an early age. He was arrested at age 14 in a brutal murder and robbery committed by several gang members. Padilla moved with his family to South Florida after being released from juvenile detention in 1988.

In 1991, he was arrested in Florida after a road rage incident in which he pointed a loaded gun at a police officer. He served 10 months in prison.

Although several published reports have suggested that Padilla converted to Islam in prison, this does not appear to be the case. (All the reports have been attributed to anonymous government sources.) What seems more likely is that Padilla formed a favorable impression of Islam as a result of his prison experience, but several well-sourced news reports indicated that he first expressed interest in actually converting in 1993, while working at a Taco Bell in Davie, Fl., near Fort Lauderdale.

The New York Times in 2002 quoted Padilla’s manager at the restaurant as saying that Padilla inquired about Islam while working at the store in early 1993.

According to government sources quoted in South Florida newspapers, Padilla may have been introduced to Islam by Adham Hassoun, a local Palestinian activist who in early 1993 opened an office of the Benevolence International Foundation in Plantation, Fla., about five minutes from Padilla’s workplace.

The Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) has been designated as a terrorist organization by the federal government, which charges that the Islamic charity is a front for al Qaeda money laundering operations. Hassoun was arrested shortly after Padilla on an immigration charge and is currently fighting deportation in South Florida. He has not been charged with a terrorism-related crime, and he has denied any ties to al Qaeda and any wrongdoing in general.

Adham Hassoun has been charged with illegally possessing a firearm, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which also reported that, in a separate proceeding “Immigration Judge Neale Foster found Hassoun participated in an assassination plot, recruited a “jihad fighter,” donated money to charities under investigation for possible links to terrorism and belonged to an international terrorist organization called Al-Gama Al-Islamiyya, according to Hassoun’s petition for release to a federal district judge. That petition was denied.”

Al-Gama Al-Islamiyya, also known as the Islamic Group, was led by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the spiritual leader of a New York City-based al Qaeda cell. One member of that cell, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, recruited U.S. military veterans for al Qaeda, as reported in an investigative report exclusive to Intelwire.

Padilla’s formal conversion appears to have taken place in 1994, when he took the Muslim name Ibrahim. When he was arrested, he had taken the Muslim name Abdullah Al-Muhajir. His subsequent court filings have been under the name Jose Padilla, which is by far the most common name used in news accounts.

Padilla left the U.S. in 1998. According to most accounts, he traveled to Egypt first, where he was to study Arabic, but found his way to Saudi Arabia and to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions and al Qaeda soon thereafter, according to an affidavit by Michael Mobbs, a Defense Department adviser.

After connecting with al Qaeda in Pakistan, Padilla appears to have answered directly to Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

CBS News reported in 2002 that Hassoun and Padilla had been in telephone contact shortly before Padilla returned to the U.S, and BIF was based in Chicago, where Padilla flew into the U.S.

Padilla is of Puerto Rican descent. His race has been identified in various government filings and criminal proceedings as white, Latino or black.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.