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January 12, 2006
US: Jose Padilla, Islamist Convert, Pleads Not Guilty
35-year old Jose Padilla, former Chicago gang member and Florida criminal turned Muslim convert and alleged Al- Qaeda member, has spent the past three years and a half years in US military custody in South Carolina. He has been classed as an "enemy combatant", following his arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002.
He was indicted on November 22 on charges of conspiring to "murder, maim and kidnap" people overseas as a member of a North American terrorist cell, along with a Canadian citizen, Kassem Daher, who is currently believed to be in Lebanon. Adham Hassoun, Mohammed Youssef and Kifah Jayyousi, who are in US custody, were also charged. Padilla is also charged with attending a military training camp in Afghanistan.
News from CBS News, the Miami Herald and AP via Mercury News report that earlier today, Jose Padilla pleaded not guilty at a federal court in Miami to the charges laid against him. Padilla has made several attempts to have his case heard in a federal court.
Padilla was denied bail by US Magistrate Judge Barry Garber, who agreed with prosecutors that Padilla would be liable to skip bail to avoid trial, and that he was potentially dangerous.
Attorney General John Ashcroft previously said that Padilla had conspired to produce a radiological dispersion device, or "dirty bomb", but this alleged plan is not included in Padilla's charge sheet. Reasons given by the Guardian at the time suggest that the informants whose testimony would be needed in court, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, had confessed after treatment which may be classed as "torture".
Padilla had met Zubaydah in Afghanistan in 2001, and the two are said to have concocted the plan to create a dirty bomb while residing in Lahore, Pakistan.
While a petty criminal in Florida, it is believed that Jose Padilla became a convert to Islam while incarcerated in Broward County Jail in Florida.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at January 12, 2006 8:45 PM
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