Posted on 06/11/2002 7:04:44 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON (AP) - The man accused of plotting with al-Qaida to detonate a ``dirty bomb'' inside the United States was a protege of a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, traveling at his mentor's request to meet with other terrorists and using the Internet to research how to build a radioactive weapon, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Jose Padilla, 31, also known as Abdullah al Muhajir, traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to meet with top al-Qaida leaders after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and surfed the Internet at a home in Lahore, Pakistan, to study ways to build a ``dirty bomb'' that could spread radioactive material over dozens of city blocks, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But Padilla's alleged association with Abu Zubaydah, the top lieutenant to bin Laden who was captured in March, was his apparent undoing. Information leading to Padilla's arrest came in part from Zubaydah himself. In April, weeks after Zubaydah's arrest, he told interrogators of a plot to use radiological weapons, but he did not provide details. The CIA investigated and came up with Padilla's name and other details. That information - including Padilla's name - was taken to Zubaydah, who confirmed it, according to a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. It's unclear whether Zubaydah volunteered the information or was tricked into giving it. Padilla apparently lost his passport in Karachi in February and sought a new one, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday. The government complied in March but tipped off the FBI and CIA about Padilla's location and his request. Padilla traveled to Chicago May 8 from Pakistan via Cairo and Zurich, Switzerland, a U.S. official said Tuesday. Swiss authorities confirmed Tuesday they were investigating Padilla's travels to their country. President Bush, who signed the order Sunday handing over Padilla to the Pentagon, described Padilla as one of many ``would-be killers'' in custody by the United States. ``There's just a full-scale manhunt on,'' Bush said Tuesday in a Cabinet Room meeting on his proposed overhaul of homeland security agencies. ``We will run down every lead, every hint. This guy Padilla's a bad guy and he is where he needs to be, detained.'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the government was more interested in questioning Padilla exhaustively than punishing him. ``We're not interested in punishing him at the moment,'' Rumsfeld said, traveling in Qatar. ``We're interested in finding out what in the world he knows. ... Our job as responsible government officials is to do everything possible to find out what that person knows and see if we can't help our country or other countries.'' Dirty bombs combine traditional explosives with radioactive material. They would not create a nuclear explosion, but they could release small amounts of radiation over parts of a city. Experts believe the most devastating effect would be the ensuing panic and the difficulty sending rescue workers into the contaminated area. Fresh details emerged Tuesday about why U.S. authorities chose to permit Padilla to slip aboard an international flight from Pakistan into Chicago, under constant surveillance by U.S. agents on the jet. The FBI arrested Padilla May 8 after he stepped off the plane. In an unusual legal twist, the Defense Department has imprisoned Padilla indefinitely in a Navy brig in South Carolina as an ``enemy combatant.'' Government lawyers acknowledged Tuesday that under a 1942 Supreme Court ruling, even Americans who fight against the United States are subject to military courts - but only if they enter the country. The court's decision, from six decades ago, focused on ``armed prowlers'' who blow up bridges or cut telegraph wires. Attorney General John Ashcroft, meeting in Budapest with justice officials, said Padilla's detention was ``the right course of action'' because of the seriousness of the threat from a radiological weapon. ``We believe that by his detention that we have significantly disrupted a potential plot,'' Ashcroft said. The Bush administration disclosed Padilla's arrest on Monday, just before a federal court hearing in New York to determine whether the Justice Department could continue holding Padilla behind bars as a material witness connected to the government's grand jury investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. At Tuesday's court hearing, the judge hinted that questions about the propriety of prosecutors' holding Padilla was a moot point - since Padilla already had been turned over to the Defense Department. Donna R. Newman, Padilla's lawyer, said outside court later that Padilla denied the government's allegations, but she otherwise declined to describe him. She indicated she will appeal the decision to place Padilla in military custody, but in such a novel case there were unanswered questions about where she even could file her appeal - in New York or South Carolina? ``His response is the allegations are not true because there are no allegations. He's not been charged, but he's being detained,'' Newman said. ``My client is a citizen,'' she added. ``He still has constitutional rights - the right to counsel, the right to be charged by a grand jury.... And they have not charged him.'' Padilla is not considered a prisoner of war or entitled to legal protections under the Geneva Convention, unlike the U.S. treatment of uniformed, enemy soldiers, government lawyers said. ``He's an enemy combatant and as in earlier wars, you can hold an enemy combatant until the end of the conflict,'' Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on CBS' ``The Early Show.''
Gov't: Padilla Was al-Qaida Protege
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I continue to question the government decisions to bring these bastards back to this country to be treated to the media circus, fed baklava on Muslim holidays and sent to court dates as not to interfere with their faith, and then mishandled by the world's best disfunctional judicial system, and lastly to serve as the front guard for the Muslim terrorists inside the US prison system. How and where d'ya think Jose was recruited himself?
NewsMax.com
Friday, Nov. 2, 2001 1:38 p.m. EST
Prison Chaplain Calls bin Laden a 'Muslim Hero'
A prison chaplain in upstate New York's Albion Correctional Facility has been put on paid administrative leave after telling inmates that Osama bin Laden should be "a hero to all Muslims."
"This afternoon, we put on administrative leave Chaplain Aminah Akbar, who is a Muslim chaplain, pending an investigation into her conduct," said James Flateau, spokesman for the state Department of Correctional Services, in an interview with the Buffalo News on Thursday.
Akbar spoke to a group of about 120 inmates and a half-dozen corrections officers at the prison Saturday during an event billed as "American Solidarity Day," the paper said.
Officers who took notes during her speech said Akbar told the group:
"Bin Laden is a warrior for Allah, as all Muslims should be. Bin Laden is a hero to all Muslims. The Taliban are right in not letting the U.S. take bin Laden. The U.S. has no proof that he destroyed the World Trade Center."
Inmates as well as corrections officer were offended by her remarks, with many of the guards filing written complaints, the News said.
Other remarks attributed to Akbar included complaints about slavery.
"We have been beaten and harassed for over 500 years, and we should not take it anymore," she reportedly told the group, adding, "I am not an American, I just live here."
"The United States is a giant country," Chaplain Akbar continued. "Why are they bombing a country the size of a pea?"
Akbar's praise for bin Laden echoes that of New Black Panther Party spokesman Malik Shabazz, who told the National Press Club over the weekend that the U.S. was scapegoating the Mideast terrorist.
"Blame President Bush" for the Sept. 11 attacks, Shabazz insisted.
Reproduced with the permission of NewsMax.com. All rights reserved.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Al-Qaeda Homeland/Civil Defense War on Terrorism
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Could it be that "protege" is a euphemism for something?
No place is safe, if the Senate doesn't condemn this Islamic invasion. It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions as a democracy.
Special to WORLD TRIBUNE.COM - Monday, August 9, 1999 BIN LADEN HAS 20 NUCLEAR BOMBS ACCORDING TO BODANSKY WASHINGTON -- Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden is believed to have up to 20 nuclear bombs and is seeking to launch a massive terrorist strike against the United States, a congressional investigator and author says. Yosef Bodansky, a researcher of the House Task Force for Counterterrorism and author of a new book on Bin Laden, told a news conference on Friday that Bin Laden has been seeking to follow up on his bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa one year ago. Echoing U.S. officials, Bodansky said Bin Laden was thwarted in plans to blow up the U.S. embassy and two consulates in India in last December and January. Bin Laden has biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, Bodansky said. The nuclear weapons include suitcase bombs acquired through Chechniyan rebels and received technical help from Iraq. "The Russians believe that he has a handful [of nuclear weapons], the Saudi intelligence services are very conservative, perhaps they are friendly to the United States, believe that he has in the neighborhood of 20," Bodansky said. "As far as the acquisition and obtaining, there's the multiple sources of that, dealing with the actual purchase of suitcase bombs. His collection of individuals knowledgeable in activating the bombs and he is looking for and recruiting former Soviet special forces in learning how to operate the bombs behind enemy lines." "As far as decision-making in Washington is concerned, we should assume that he has them," he added. "Most of them have been transferred through Pakistan." "Let me stress here: We don't have any indication that they are going to use it tomorrow or any other day," added Bodansky, whose analyses are considered controversial in Washington. "But they have the capability, they have the legitimate authorization, they have the logic for using it. So, one does not go into the tremendous amount of expenditures, effort, investment in human beings, in human resources, to have something that will be just kept somewhere in storage for a rainy day." Bodansky said Bin Laden has strong ties with Islamic fundamentalists throughout the Middle East, the Balkans, Britain in the Untied States. He refused to name any specific organization in the United States. "There's a distinct minority within the Moslem community in the United States that is very sympathetic to his cause, to his analysis and interpretation of the relationship between the hub of Islam and the penetration of Westernization, Western culture and the like," he said. "And a minority among this minority are known to have crossed the threshold of willingness to commit terrorist acts or commit violence. Many have been trained in Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere throughout the Moslem world, so that they are capable. They have the skills and capabilities to carry out an operation as required." Bodansky said Bin Laden remains in Afghanistan. He said the Saudi is located in Islam Darva, about 80 kilometers northwest of Kandahar. When he wants to communicate with the outside world, he travels to Jalalabad.
Flyover Country is sounding better and better.
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