MIAMI — When federal prosecutors begin to present evidence Monday against terrorism suspect Jose Padilla, their case is expected to rest heavily on a single document: his alleged application to become an Islamic warrior.
The federal indictment says Padilla filled out the mujahedin data form on July 24, 2000, "in preparation for violent jihad training in Afghanistan." The indictment alleges Padilla and two codefendants sought U.S. recruits and funding for foreign holy wars.
Prosecutors plan to call a covert CIA operative to testify in disguise about the document's provenance and chain of possession, and will go on to introduce more than half of the 200-plus transcripts from wiretapped conversations among the defendants.
Nowhere in the indictment is there mention of the sensational charges leveled against Padilla when he was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in May 2002. Then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said U.S. agents had thwarted a plot between Padilla, who is a U.S. citizen, and top Al Qaeda figures to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" or blow up apartment buildings in U.S. cities.
The case against Padilla, now 36, has come a long way since then, and illustrates how the administration's policies of detaining suspects in the war on terrorism can backfire.
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.
He had been held at the brig for 3 1/2 years as an "enemy combatant" with status more like the detainees at Guantanamo than a U.S. citizen incarcerated for the charges he would eventually face in federal court. Much of the time he was without human contact, daylight, any timepiece or a mirror. He was subjected to "stress positions" and extremes of heat, noise and light. And interrogations without an attorney present, the government has said, elicited information the Justice Department included in a widely publicized June 2004 report on Padilla's alleged contacts with Al Qaeda.
The dossier on the dirty-bomb allegations was augmented by testimony that senior Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah gave while in a secret CIA prison overseas, according to court papers filed in November. Zubaydah is now being held as a "high-value detainee" at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
