Now we know how they got him. They have been on him since OKC.
Posted on 06/10/2002 3:51:34 PM PDT by JustPiper
Jose Padilla was known to neighbors as “Pucho,” or “Pudgy.” Authorities knew him as a gang member who knocked around the streets of Logan Square.
Within the last few years, his mother told his former landlady she was worried because her son left the country and had become a member of a cult.
“She was scared for him,” said Norma Leon, 47, the former landlady.
Those fears worsened today as federal officials added a few new labels to the the former Northwest Side gangbanger, calling him an al- Qaida operative and “an enemy combatant” of the United States.
Padilla, 31, was accused of training with terrorists in Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network in Afghanistan and Pakistan and conspiring to build and detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb”—possibly in Washington D.C.
Yesterday, after consultation with the acting secretary of defense and other senior officials, both the acting secretary of defense and I recommended that the president of the United States, in his capacity as commander in chief, determine that Abdullah Al Mujahir, born Jose Padilla, determine that Mujahir is an enemy combatant who poses a serious and continued threat to the American people and our national security.
After the determination, Abdullah Al Mujahir was transferred from the custody of the Justice Department to the custody of the Defense Department.
Following serving in prison in the United States in the early 1990s, Jose Padilla referred to himself as Abdullah Al Mujahir. Subsequent to his release from prison, he traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan. On several occasions in 2001, he met with senior al-Qaida officials.
While in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Mujahir trained with the enemy, including studying how to wire explosive devices and researching radiological dispersion devices. Al-Qaida officials knew that as a citizen of the United States, as a citizen of the United States holding a valid U.S. passport, Al Mujahir would be able to travel freely in the U.S. without drawing attention to himself.
The United States government was tracking Abdullah Al Mujahir when, on May 8, 2002, this year, he flew from Pakistan into Chicago O'Hare International Airport, where he was placed in the custody of federal law enforcement authorities.
In apprehending Al Mujahir as he sought entry into the United States, we have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive "dirty bomb."
Now, a radioactive "dirty bomb" involves exploding a conventional bomb that not only kills victims in the immediate vicinity, but also spreads radioactive material that is highly toxic to humans and can cause mass death and injury.
From information available to the United States government, we know that Abdullah Al Mujahir is an al-Qaida operative and was exploring a plan to build and explode a radioactive "dirty bomb."
Let me be clear: We know from multiple independent and corroborating sources that Abdullah Al Mujahir was closely associated with al-Qaida and that as an al-Qaida operative he was involved in planning future terrorist attacks on innocent American civilians in the United States.
The safety of all Americans and the national security interests of the United States require that Abdullah Al Mujahir be detained by the Defense Department as an enemy combatant. In determining that Al Mujahir is an enemy combatant who legally can be detained by the United States military, we have acted with legal authority both under the laws of war and clear Supreme Court precedent, which establish that the military may detain a United States citizen who has joined the enemy and has entered our country to carry out hostile acts.
Once again, I commend the FBI, the CIA and other agencies involved in capturing Abdullah Al Mujahir before he could act on his deadly plan. Because of the close cooperation among the FBI, the CIA, Defense Department and other federal agencies, we were able to thwart this terrorist.
To our enemies, I say we will continue to be vigilant against all threats, whether they come from overseas or at home in America. To our citizens, I say we will continue to respect the rule of law while doing everything in our power to prevent terrorist attacks.
“We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or ‘‘dirty bomb,’’ in the United States,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said.
Padilla, who authorities said converted to Islam and went by the name Abdullah Al Mujahir, was arrested May 8 as he stepped off a plane from Pakistan at O’Hare International Airport. FBI agents from New York and Chicago took him into custody on a warrant that described him as a material witness.
“He is suspected of planning an attack on the United States,” said David Browne, an FBI agent in the Chicago office.
A senior Bush administration official said, “We don’t believe it went beyond the planning stages.”
Padilla has been held in New York until today, when he was handed over to the Department of Defense.
A Justice Department official said that under U.S. legal rules, Mujahir can be held indefinitely as an enemy soldier. But there are no plans to impose a military tribunal or otherwise press U.S. criminal charges against Mujahir, said this official, discussing the case only on grounds of anonymity.
Padilla was born in New York, but moved to Chicago with his family at age 4. He grew up here, but later moved to Florida.
Leon remembers Padilla as a good kid who enjoyed playing softball with neighborhood kids when he wasn't indoors hitting the books. She knew nothing of his alleged crimes and gang affiliations.
“You never know a person, the details,” she said. “He was either playing ball outside or inside studying, that's what I remember of him. . . People do change.”
By her recollection, she rented to Padilla's family for about a decade in the two-flat graystone at 2329 N. Albany in Logan Square.
“She wanted to, I think she was going to get married to some guy, his family lived out there, and she went after him,” Leon said of the mother, Estela, known as Stela.
Estela had five kids by at least two men. Jose's father died when he was young. Estela was known as Estela Ortega when she was in Chicago, but now goes by a different last name.
A woman who indicated she knew Estela answered the phone at Estela's Florida phone number and angrily hung up, saying “She don't live here no more.”
“He was always very respectful and quiet,’’said Nelly Ojeda, Leon’s mother. “I've got nothing bad to say about him.”
Ojeda said the family—Padilla and four siblings—originally hailed from Rio Pedras, Puerto Rico.
“He was very handsome, he had a chubby little face and beautiful short hair,” Ojeda said. Known in the neighborhood as “Pucho,” which can translate into “pudgy,” he would often play basketball with neighborhood boys at Darwin Elementary School, across the street from his apartment.
Padilla’s whole family lived in a modest, two-bedroom, first-floor apartment in a two-story graystone in Logan Square.
Ojeda lived in the basement apartment beneath them for years.
“He always helped his mother and was a good kid,” she said.
The family moved to Florida around 1985 when Padilla's mother's boyfriend moved to Florida.
Ojeda still speaks to Padilla's mother, and she mentioned that Padilla moved to the Middle East after marrying a woman from that region.
Padilla had a checkered arrest record. He was arrested five times by Chicago Police between 1985 and 1991, Browne said. He was convicted of obstructing police and assault, but Browne would provide no more details.
According to Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Lucy Ramirez, Padillo last attended a Chicago public school in December of 1985, when he was at the Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center.
Ramirez said the system's computer had “purged” all computerized records of him before that date, so she could not say what school he attended before he was at Nancy B. Jefferson, how long he was at there, or what he was arrested for that landed him in Jefferson.
“We have nothing on why he was there,”Ramirez said.
Padilla was convicted of aggravated assault and firing a handgun in Broward County, Fla., and sentenced to a year’s probation in August 1992, said Yolanda Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections.
“A couple of years back I knew he entered a cult,” said Leon, who kept in touch with the family after they moved. “I know that because even his mom said it. He left the country.”
After serving time in prison in the early 1990s, Padilla traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and met with senior al-Qaida officials last year, said Ashcroft, who announced the arrest while in Moscow on other business. While in those countries, Padilla is accused of training with the enemy, “including studying how to wire explosive devices and researching radiological dispersion devices.”
A “dirty bomb” is packed with radioactive material. Much more crude—and less lethal—that a nuclear weapon, a “dirty bomb” is designed to create panic by sending radioactive material through the air as the bomb explodes.
“Let me be clear,” Ashcroft said. “We know from multiple independent and corroborating sources that Abdullah Al Mujahir was closely associated with al-Qaida and that as an al-Qaida operative he was involved in planning future terrorist attacks on innocent American civilians in the United States.”
Lt. Col. Rivers Johnson, a Pentagon spokesman, said Mujahir would not be eligible for trial by a military tribunal set up under Defense Department rules issued in March because those tribunals are for alleged terrorists who are not U.S. citizens
Contributing: Rosalind Rossi, Frank Main
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El Rukn has been directly linked to Jesse Jackson by Kenneth Timmerman, in his book "Shakedown, exposing the real Jesse Jackson."
Let's see if the lame stream media follows this angle.
Black gangs vs. Latino gangs--------so much for respect.
This makes the third "flavor" of detainee. Foreigners who are detained at GITMO and subject to military tribunals, citizens who are captured with other combatants in Afghanistan and who are being tried in US courts after forced re-patriation (Lindh) , and now, US citizens apprehended in the US and detained outside the US justice system as combatants.
Perhaps someday the authorities will clarify the rules they are using since they don't seem clear to me. It would appear that there is a chance that Padilla will sit in a federal prison without the benefit of normal protections afforded US citizens until the Congress declares that the war is over. He might be very old by then. Perhaps someone can clarify for me just exactly what the Congress could declare to indicate that the war is over.
A very interesting documentary was on the other night describing the treatment of German POWs during WW II. They were re-patriated as much as a year or 18 months after the end of the war. Some were forced(?) to take indoctrination training prior to their return to Germany. It was suggested that this indoctrination was explicitly prohibited by the Geneva Convention to which the US was and is a signatory.
The man destined to be dubbed the would-be "Dirty Bomber" is a former member of a Chicago street gang who converted to Islam while serving a one-year jail sentence within an American prison.
Abdullah al-Mujahir, 31, formerly known as Jose Padilla, is a US citizen with a US passport. Reports from US law enforcement sources say that in the early 1990s he was a member of a gang operating within the city of Chicago, Illinois. In the early 1990s, possibly 1991, Mr al-Mujahir was jailed – believed to be for 12 months – and that during his incarceration he became interested in Islam.
Details about Mr al-Mujahir – who is being held at the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina – are far from complete. It is believed he was born in Brooklyn, New York, and that he moved to Chicago at the age of four or five. His arrest in the early 1990s was believed to be over weapons offences.
The US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, said Mr al-Mujahir had travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan during 2001 and met with al-Qa'ida officials. Mr Ashcroft said he "trained with the enemy, including studying how to wire explosive devices and researching radiological dispersion devices". Other sources said he also spent time in the Middle East and that on at least one occasion he met with Abu Zubeida, a senior al-Qa'ida figure currently in US custody at Guantanamo Bay and whose interrogation has apparently led to Mr al-Mujahir's arrest.
Mr al-Mujahir first met Mr Zubeida – the man who was being groomed to take over the leadership of al-Qa'ida from Osama bin Laden – in Afghanistan in 2001, and then travelled with him to Pakistan. At Mr Zubeida's request he also travelled to the Pakistani city of Karachi to meet with senior al-Qa'ida operatives, to discuss the plan.
One US official said they talked about plans to bomb hotel rooms and petrol stations within America.
Mr Ashcroft said that al-Qa'ida may have been particularly keen to recruit Mr al-Mujahir because he owned a US passport and could therefore travel more easily within the country than other members of the terror network.
Mr al-Mujahir was arrested on 8 Mayat Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, coming off a Kuwaiti Airlines flight from Pakistan. He was being held on a federal warrant in New York. With last night's deadline for the authorities to charge or release Mr al-Mujahir approaching, he was named an "enemy combatant" and transferred to the custody of the Defence Department. Officials admitted this was done so he could be held longer without charge.
Mr Ashcroft said: "We have acted with legal authority both under the laws of war and clear Supreme Court precedent, which establishes that the military may detain a United States citizen who has joined the enemy and has entered our country to carry out hostile acts."
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
How does the terrorist gather together enough radioactive material to kill more than a few people without dying from radiation poisoning himself?
"While in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Al Mujahir trained with the enemy, including studying how to wire explosive devices and researching radiological dispersion devices."
I fully recognize their cellular structure, but destroying a few cells starts to plant seeds of doubt in their minds.
Now we know how they got him. They have been on him since OKC.
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