Word: padilla
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...weeks ago, in a case involving Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen accused of plotting with al-Qaeda to detonate a dirty bomb in an American city, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Michael Luttig refused to go along with the government's plan to transfer Padilla from a military brig to civilian custody. Originally, the Bush Administration named Padilla an enemy combatant, prompting his lawyers to challenge that designation. Just as the Supreme Court prepared to review the case, a federal grand jury indicted Padilla in a Miami court on charges of conspiring to carry out attacks abroad. (In the new indictment...
Luttig is an unusual White House opponent. As recently as September, he affirmed the President's power to hold Padilla without charges for more than three years as an enemy combatant. And his court--the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va.--has been the White House venue of choice for bringing cases because it considers that bench ideologically sympathetic. Undeterred, the Bush Administration last week asked the Supreme Court to overturn Luttig's ruling...
...other lawyers involved in some major terrorism cases are planning to file court challenges to see where the information on their clients came from. Miami attorney Kenneth Swartz represents Adham Amin Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian who lived in Broward County, Fla., and has been charged, along with Padilla, in an alleged conspiracy to commit terrorist acts abroad. Swartz says if any of the wiretaps used to build a case against his client were done "without legal authority, it would be a real constitutional issue...
...moving Padilla into the criminal-justice system, the Bush Administration may be able to avoid a Supreme Court review of Padilla's status as an enemy combatant, a thorny legal issue. But his attorneys note that if the court doesn't rule on the matter, other U.S. citizens could be detained indefinitely without being charged, as could Padilla again...
Missing from the indictment are allegations that Padilla planned to detonate a dirty bomb or blow up apartment buildings. Evidence for those charges came from captured al-Qaeda helmsmen Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, who have undergone the sort of coercive interrogation treatment, including waterboarding, that can induce people to lie. "It would have been very difficult to use that in court," said a Justice Department official. Expect pretrial skirmishes over such issues as access to classified information and, possibly, the effects of three years of isolation on Padilla's psyche. Said Patel: "He's been alone, with...