On Thursday August 16, a Miami jury found Jose Padilla and two co-defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya and providing material support toward that goal. Padilla was initially accused of plotting to set off a radioactive dirty bomb inside the US and was stripped of all rights, transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina and held in extreme isolation for 43 months. Faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush announced criminal charges against Padilla unrelated to the dirty bomb plot. Defense attorneys and experts say his isolation and interrogation has led to severe psychological effects. Padilla is scheduled for sentencing on December 5th and faces life in prison. His lawyer plans to appeal.

Democracy Now Report | WSWS: A travesty of justice: Jose Padilla found guilty | An Inside Look at How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla

Jose Padilla was born in New York but later moved to Chicago where he joined the Maniac Latin Disciples street gang and was arrested several times. After serving a jail sentence in Florida, he converted to Islam. One of his early religious instructors was an Islamic teacher who professed a nonviolent philosophy, and Padilla appeared at the time to be faithful to his mentor's teachings. Padilla traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. On his return, he was arrested by federal agents at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, and held as a material witness on a warrant issued in the state of New York stemming from the September 11, 2001 attacks. On June 9, 2002, two days before District Court Judge Michael Mukasey was to issue a ruling on the validity of continuing to hold Padilla under the material witness warrant, President Bush issued an order to Secretary Rumsfeld to detain Padilla as an "enemy combatant," and Padilla was transferred to a military brig in South Carolina without any notice to his attorney or family.

Because Padilla was being detained without any criminal charges being formally made against him, his lawyer made a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. On December 18, 2003, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals declared that without clear Congressional approval, Bush could not detain an American citizen as an "illegal enemy combatant" and ordered that Padilla be released from the military brig within 30 days. The release was stayed pending the government's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court heard the case, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, in April 2004, but on June 28, 2004, the court dismissed the petition on technical grounds. On September 9, 2005, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that President Bush does indeed have the authority to detain Padilla without charges, in an opinion written by judge J. Michael Luttig ( view pdf ).

On November 22, 2005 it was announced that Padilla had been indicted on charges he "conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas." Padillia's lawyer correlated the indictment's timing as avoidance of an impending Supreme Court hearing on the Padilla case: "the administration is seeking to avoid a Supreme Court showdown over the issue". None of the original allegations put forward by the U.S. government three years prior were part of the indictment.

Coverage Of The Trial: Jurors begin deliberations in Jose Padilla trial | Padilla "terrorism support trial" unravels | Opening statements delivered in Jose Padilla trial | Trial of “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla begins | US judge rejects demand to dismiss Padilla case on grounds of torture | Judge rules Jose Padilla competent for trial | Padilla suffered brain damage during captivity, experts say | Judge in Padilla case orders mental evaluation | White House caught in its own lies

A tale of two cases in US “war on terror”: Jose Padilla and Chiquita Brands | Why did the Bush Administration Hold Jose Padilla for 3 Years as an Enemy Combatant? | Jose Padilla and the death of personal liberty

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