It just never ends, this case of Jose Padilla, does it?
Direct from yesterday’s Miami Herald:
After the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan to oust its Taliban rulers, authorities found a locker full of applications to join al Qaeda’s holy war overseas.
Among the alleged applicants: José Padilla, the former ”enemy combatant” who once lived in Broward County.
”It was recovered by U.S. personnel in late 2001 after the United States began bombing Afghanistan,” Justice Department lawyer Stephanie Pell said, referring to Padilla’s alleged al Qaeda application.
She added it was found among 80 to 100 other mujahadeen (holy warrior) applications found in the country, which harbored al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before he masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. terrorist attacks.
Sheesh… is this Al-Qaeda a secretive, master terrorist network or is it an armed version of the Boy Scouts? Applications??
Even worse, Padilla’s attorney, Michael Caruso, asked to call an FBI agent to the stand to question him about the “application form” and the government denied this request. Whatever happened to the right of cross-examination?
The prosecution now says Padilla was part of a five-member “sleeper cell” operating out of Florida, who have been in operation since 1993. 1993? Padilla wasn’t even arrested until 2002, so why the delay?
I mean Jose Padilla has been bearing the brunt of the worst kind of government heavy-handedness. First he was arrested in Chicago (May 2002) and kept for more than 3 years in a military prison, not charged with any crime and unable to even meet with a lawyer (much less his family).
The media “OJ’d” his photograph, retouching it to make him look more menacing and scary. Padilla was first “detained” as a material witness to the 9/11 attacks. Then in June 2002, Bush directly ordered Rumsfeld to designate Padilla an “enemy combatant”.
In December 2003, a federal court said that Bush couldn’t call him an enemy combatant without authorization from Congress. The Bush administration appealed and the Supreme Court heard the case in April 2004. Then they said that Padilla’s lawyers challenged his indefinite imprisonment to the wrong person, so he had to re-file it.
Then in September 2005, a different federal court says the Bush administration can hold him as an enemy combatant, but only if he was directly tied to 9/11 attacks. Since he wasn’t, in November 2005 the government suddenly un-designated him as an “enemy combatant” and then charged him with crimes relating to fund-raising for terrorist organizations.
So now Padilla is no longer in military prison (as of January 3, 2006) and is in the beginning of a civilian trial in Florida, about being a member of some group that’s been monitored since 1993.
And let’s not forget Ashcroft in 2002 crowing about how Padilla had some plans to “blow up apartments” by setting fire to their natural gas pipes.
Everyone has forgotten what Rumsfeld and Bush actually said about this guy when they “detained” him in 2002:
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier Tuesday that Padilla — who also goes by the name of Abdullah Al Muhajir — may never face trial.
“Our interest is not in trying him and punishing him,” Rumsfeld said. “Our interest is in finding out what he knows.”
But Rumsfeld, speaking during a stopover in Qatar on his way to India, said Padilla “was unquestionably involved in terrorist activities.”
President Bush branded Padilla a “bad guy” on Tuesday, saying he was one of many “would-be killers” in custody as part of the war against terrorism.
“This guy, Padilla, is a bad guy,” Bush said as he met with lawmakers at the White House to discuss his proposal for a Department of Homeland Security. “And he is where he needs to be — detained.”
So I guess that’s all out the window now, eh? So which is it, is he a dangerous Al-Qaeda terrorist with links to 9/11 or is he just a guy who fund-raised for terrorists?
Read what the Department of Justice said about him in 2004: that he knew Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “Operational leader of Al-Qaeda and the mastermind behind 9/11”, he knew Abu Zubaydah, he knew Mohammed Atef, he knew Adnan Shukrijuma aka “Jafar the Pilot”. Sheesh.
The DOJ summed it up this way:
Jose Padilla was more than a criminal defendant with the broad menu of rights that we offer in our great criminal justice system. On May the 8th of 2002, a soldier of our enemy, a trained, funded and equipped terrorist, stepped off that plane at Chicago’s O’Hare; a highly trained al Qaeda soldier who had accepted an assignment to kill hundreds of innocent men, women and children by destroying apartment buildings; an al Qaeda soldier who still hoped and planned to do even more by detonating a radiological device, a dirty bomb, in this country; an al Qaeda soldier who was trusted enough to spend hour after hour with the leaders of al Qaeda: Mohammed Atef, Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; an al Qaeda soldier who had vital information about our enemy and its plans; and lastly an al Qaeda soldier who, as an American citizen, was free to move in, within and out of this country.
And now he’s in the midst of an ordinary trial on much more minor charges? That he was part of a cell to “send money, physical assets and mujahideen recruits to overseas conflicts”? What happened to all the stuff he was supposedly prepared to do in America?
Either this guy is a super deadly terrorist or he isn’t. Which is it? And how can an American citizen become an “enemy combatant” for 3 and a half years and then magically cease to be an “enemy combatant”? What’s the criteria for that?
What if it was me, or you, who was an enemy combatant, with no rights and no due process and no habeas corpus and no lawyers, for years and years? Not to mention that the Bush administration openly admits to “questioning” him for years inside of a military prison.
They’ve been interrogating him for 3 years and all they could come up with was that he conspired to send money to terrorists in a foreign country? I really can’t find the words to describe how ridiculous that is.
Sounds to me like someone dropped the ball in a major way and it’s going to be a while before we figured out who, and what, prompted this.
