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Feds push to keep terror suspect behind bars
Phil Hirschkorn
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The federal government has argued in court papers that a U.S. citizen in his fifth month of detention as an "enemy combatant" is an al Qaeda agent and should remain behind bars. In papers filed Friday in Manhattan federal court, federal prosecutors said Jose Padilla, a Muslim convert also known as Abdullah al Mujahir, engaged in the early stages of a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" -- a conventional bomb laced with radioactive material -- inside the United States. Padilla, 31, is being detained at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, publicly accused of plotting to commit an act of terrorism, but never formally charged. His attorneys, who are barred from communicating with their client, say he is being detained illegally and should be returned to New York, where they say the government should be forced to comply with standard criminal court procedures. Short of obtaining Padilla's immediate release, his attorneys want to be permitted to meet with him. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey is due to decide whether Padilla's case will be heard in his lower Manhattan courtroom, or whether it will be heard by a South Carolina court or stay in the hands of the military. According to a June 9 order from President Bush declaring Padilla an enemy combatant, Padilla "engaged in hostile and war-like acts, including conduct in preparation for acts of international terrorism that had the aim to cause injury to or adverse effects on the United States." Bush accused Padilla of associating with al Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks. Padilla's continued detention "is necessary to prevent him from aiding al Qaeda in its efforts to attack the United States or its armed forces, other governmental personnel, or citizens," according to the government's court papers. Padilla was arrested in Chicago, Illinois, May 8 after getting off a plane from Zurich, Switzerland. He had been in Egypt and Pakistan -- the gateway to Afghanistan, where, according to prosecutors, he received bomb-making training and met with al Qaeda leaders. "Multiple intelligence sources separately confirmed Padilla's involvement in planning future terrorist attacks," prosecutors have said. "The plan included stealing radioactive material for the bomb within the United States ... possibly in Washington, D.C." they have said. Other plans, prosecutors allege, called for "multiple, simultaneous" bombing attacks on U.S. hotels, gas stations, and train stations. Padilla allegedly received his instructions from senior al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah, who is in U.S. custody and is one of two al Qaeda operatives who have talked to investigators about Padilla. Zubaydah was approached by Padilla and "an associate" with the dirty bomb proposal, according to prosecutors, who said Zubaydah then sent the two to terrorist training camps. Court-appointed defense attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel offered a different view of their client. "His entrance [to the United States] can hardly be characterized as surreptitious. He did not possess a weapon, a bomb, nuclear material, or an instruction manual relating to even rudimentary bomb making" when he got off the plane, they wrote in their court briefing. He is not a member of al Qaeda, they added. Padilla was transferred to New York City's federal jail on a material witness warrant signed by Mukasey and held for a month until Bush changed his status, a move within his power as commander-in-chief, prosecutors said. Newman and Patel called the accusations against Padilla little more than hearsay and said his constitutional right to due process is being violated. "Padilla is being incarcerated without a charge, based on suspicion of possible future acts," they wrote. Padilla is "at most, a person who was not willing to be a martyr but who was in the beginning talk stage of a plan for a crime that had neither a target, timetable, nor access to materials to build the weapon under investigation," Newman and Patel wrote. The defense attorneys also have said Bush was not authorized to name Padilla an enemy combatant, because Congress has issued no formal declaration of war. Prosecutors said Friday that the "enemy combatant" classification is not limited to soldiers detained in Afghanistan or foreign nationals, and that such detention is lawful under the joint congressional resolution authorizing force to respond to the September 11 attacks. "The settled authority of the military to detain enemy combatants in a time of war does not depend on a formal declaration of war, and it is fully applicable to those who attempt to extend the conflict beyond the traditional battlefield," prosecutors said. The government has classified only one other detainee an "enemy combatant" -- Yaser Hamdi, a Louisiana-born U.S. citizen who fought with the Taliban and is being held in a Norfolk, Virginia, Navy brig. Recently, prosecutors filed charges in criminal court against Americans who are alleged al Qaeda operatives in Buffalo, New York, and Portland, Oregon. Padilla, born in Brooklyn, grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and has a troubled past. As a juvenile gang member, he was convicted of aggravated battery and armed robbery and was incarcerated for three years until he turned 18. He later spent nearly a year in a Florida jail for a handgun crime. His defense attorneys said he had been planning to visit his son in Chicago, Illinois, when he was taken in to custody.
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