MIAMI – Former “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla next week will plead not guilty to charges he joined terrorists in an Islamic holy war abroad, his attorney said Friday outside the Miami federal courthouse.
But the criminal charges outlined in an indictment against Padilla are completely unrelated to the “dirty bomber” accusation that landed the former Broward County, Fla., resident in U.S. military detention for about four years.
“This case started in an unusual way, but I’m happy today it’s in a criminal court proceeding,” said New York lawyer Andrew Patel, who is representing Padilla with the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Miami. “Mr. Padilla is being treated like any other American citizen in the criminal justice system.”
Padilla’s status as an enemy combatant changed on Thursday with his transfer from a South Carolina naval brig to the Miami Federal Detention Center. The move was made immediately following this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed Padilla’s transfer into the criminal justice system. The decision represented a victory for the Bush administration.
Padilla, 35, will have both an arraignment and bond hearing Thursday. He is charged with being a recruit for a North American terrorist cell with South Florida links that allegedly aided an Islamic jihad abroad. The trial is in September. If convicted, he faces a life sentence.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office will argue that Padilla is not only a danger to the community but also a flight risk, Justice Department lawyer Stephanie Pell told Magistrate Judge Barry Garber on Friday.
“Why am I not surprised?” Garber said at Friday’s brief hearing, attended by Padilla’s mother Estela Ortega Lebron, her husband and the defendant’s step brother. Family members, who live in Broward, declined comment.
Padilla was arrested by the FBI in Chicago in May 2002 upon his return from Pakistan after allegedly training with al-Qaida in the Middle East.
President Bush, using wartime powers granted by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, designated the U.S.-born Padilla as an “enemy combatant” based on an accusation that he was plotting to detonate a radiological “dirty bomb” on American soil.
Administration lawyers argued before federal courts in Virginia and New York that Padilla was part of an al-Qaida-backed plot to blow up apartment buildings in New York, Washington or Florida.
But Padilla was not charged with those allegations in the indictment returned against him in November by a South Florida federal grand jury.
He and four other defendants are accused of providing money, recruits and other support to kill people in a holy war overseas. The terrorism case, filed in 2004, first targeted Adham Amin Hassoun, a Palestinian computer programmer from Sunrise, Fla.
In federal custody since 2002, Hassoun is accused of being a North American leader for the Islamic fundamentalist war abroad – including recruiting Padilla. Padilla, born to Puerto Rican parents in New York and raised in Chicago, met Hassoun at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., mosques during the 1990s.
But Hassoun’s lawyer, Kenneth Swartz, challenged the allegations in the indictment. “His relationship with Mr. Padilla had nothing to do with terrorism,” Swartz said outside the federal courthouse.
The other defendants are: Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a former Washington and Detroit school administrator, who could soon be released from the Miami Federal Detention Center on a $1.3 million bond granted Thursday; Mohamed Hesham Youssef, an alleged recruit, who is being held in Egypt in an unrelated terrorism case; and Kasseem Daher, a Canadian citizen, who is in custody overseas.
According to the indictment, Hassoun, Jayyousi and Daher recruited and raised tens of thousands of dollars to send Youssef, Padilla and others to Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya and Somalia for terrorist training to spread extreme Islamic law.
But the indictment makes no reference to their participation in any specific terrorist acts overseas.
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AP-NY-01-06-06 2114EST
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