The Bush administration and the Padilla case: White House caught in its own lies

Late last November, the Justice Department reversed itself and requested that the court agree to remove Padilla from military control so that he could be tried on criminal charges in Florida. The Bush administration was stunned when the Fourth Circuit panel first demanded that it furnish an explanation for its about-face on Padilla’s military detention, and then ruled against the Justice Department’s request.

The Fourth Circuit’s action was all the more unexpected since the same three-judge panel, headed by right-wing Republican J. Michael Luttig, had handed Bush a legal victory the previous September, upholding his right to arrest and indefinitely detain Padilla as an enemy combatant.

The panel rebuked the Bush administration for dropping all of the allegations it had made in placing Padilla in military confinement in the first place, and lodging entirely new charges in its criminal indictment. In his rejection of the government’s request last month, Luttig made no bones about his belief that the Justice Department’s decision to issue a criminal indictment and remove Padilla from military custody was a maneuver to block Padilla’s case from going before the US Supreme Court, where a petition for review had been filed by Padilla’s lawyers against Luttig’s September ruling.

When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had announced the criminal indictment, he said it rendered Padilla’s appeal to the US Supreme Court “moot.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/padi-j03.shtml