MIAMI – When federal prosecutors begin to present evidence today against accused terrorist Jose Padilla, their case is expected to rest heavily on a single document: his alleged application to become an Islamic warrior.
The Mujahedeen Data Form was reportedly filled out by Padilla on July 24, 2000, “in preparation for violent jihad training in Afghanistan,” according to the federal indictment that alleges Padilla and two co-defendants sought U.S. recruits and funding for foreign holy wars.
Padilla, 36, a U.S. citizen, and the co-defendants are indicted for alleged conspiracy and material support of terrorism.
Prosecutors plan to call a covert CIA operative to testify in disguise about the document, and will go on to introduce more than half of the 200-plus transcripts from wiretapped conversations among the defendants.
But nowhere in the indictment is there any mention of the sensational charges leveled against Padilla when he was arrested at O’Hare International Airport in May 2002.
Then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft claimed U.S. agents had thwarted a plot among Padilla and top al-Qaida figures to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb or blow up apartment buildings in U.S. cities.
The allegations that Padilla was part of a dirty bomb plot were dropped in November 2005, when the Pentagon transferred him out of a military brig in Charleston, S.C.
While there, he had been held as a so-called “enemy combatant” with status more like the detainees at Guantanamo than a U.S. citizen incarcerated for the charges he eventually would face in federal court. Padilla spent much of his 31/2 years in the brig deprived of human contact, daylight and any time-keeping device. He was subjected to so-called “stress positions” and extremes of temperature, noise and light.
Prolonged interrogations without an attorney present reportedly elicited statements the Justice Department included in a widely publicized report in June 2004 detailing Padilla’s contacts with al-Qaida.
The conspiracy charges came about when a Supreme Court ruling was expected to clarify that as a U.S. citizen, Padilla was entitled to a speedy trial, legal representation and other constitutional protections. The Pentagon abandoned its effort to jail him indefinitely as an enemy combatant, and he was transferred to the Federal Detention Center in Miami.
He was added to the government’s case against former school administrator and one-time San Diego resident Kifah Wael Jayyousi and computer programmer Adham Amin Hassoun.
In pre-trial rulings on defense motions alleging government mistreatment of Padilla, Cooke effectively severed the conspiracy case from the dirty bomb allegations.
She has warned prosecutors that any attempt to tie Padilla to those purported plots would open the door to the defense being able to introduce the military’s controversial and classified detention and interrogation tactics.
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