Padilla Guilty

Former Chicago resident and one-time member of the Maniac Latin Disciples Jose Padilla was convicted yesterday of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists, and providing material support for terrorists. Adham Amin Hassoun, a Lebanon-born Palestinian, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a naturalized US citizen born in Jordan, were convicted as well in federal court.

2007_8_padilla.jpgAlthough held for 3-1/2 years in military custody as an enemy combatant, his case was moved to the 11th Circuit federal court in Miami last year as the US Supreme Court was about to rule on the issue of jurisdiction over his case. A key piece of evidence in the case was an application Padilla turned into al Qaeda, hoping to attend a terror training camp in Afghanistan, recovered by the CIA in 2001. The application had seven of Padilla's fingerprints, as well as personal information. The document linked him to his co-defendants as well. Included in the prosecutions evidence presented at trial was some 300,000 recorded telephone conversations involving Padilla and Hassoun and Jayyousi.

Padilla was arrested at O'Hare airport in 2002 on a warrant for his connection to the September 11 attacks in New York. Although he was originally a suspect in an alleged plot to detonate a "dirty-bomb" here, those details were not brought up in the 11th Circuit trial. Much of the information about the planned attack was obtained during interrogations in military custody, without legal council or having his Miranda rights read to him. In June of 02, President Bush ordered Padilla held as an enemy combatant shortly before a federal judge was to issue a ruling on the validity of continued imprisonment.

Padilla is scheduled to be sentenced December 5. He faces life in prison.

Image via NNDB

Comments (21) [rss]

Is he going to SuperMax? I would beg for the death penalty before going there as a prisoner.

Wow, al quaeda takes applications? I wonder if you have to give three references.

good riddance.

Denied his rights as an american citizen, held without charge for years, tortured, driven mentally incompetent (aka insane).

Whatever he may or may not be guilty of, and the government couldn't even try him for the dirty bomb plot, which was bogus, the people who locked him away for years and tortured him until he lost his mind should be thrown into a supermax for 25 to life as well.

ooh the poor baby! He didn't know that plotting jihad was against the law!

Somehow, I suspect that if he was a white guy from West Virginia plotting to blow up gay bars he wouldn't find any defenders here.

I don't care what you've done--even child rapists deserve the benefits of council and a speedy arraignment.

It's (at the VERY least) hypocritical to say that we are denying someone these truly American legal rights, in order to protect American ideology.

Much like Sacco and Vanzetti this dude was probably up to some shady stuff, just not the things with which he was accused. His treatment over the past five years has spit in the eye of common decency and the disregard of his rights as a citizen spits in the eye of justice.

He can be John Walker Lindhs roommate....

Guest #5 :"Somehow, I suspect that if he was a white guy from West Virginia plotting to blow up gay bars he wouldn't find any defenders here."

Somehow, I suspect if he were a white guy from west virginia you'd care more about his treatment.

Super-max would be a walk in the park compared to the years he spent pre-trial in military prison. He was held in solitary, when removed from his cell he was forced to wear blackout goggles, etc.

So much for the federal government's argument that it's impossible to try and convict these guys in regular criminal courts. They just exposed as BS the "enemy combatant" designation of an American civilian.

Are you ever a "one time" member of a gang?

I thought he was a Latin King?

Anyways, once a king...always a king!

11) They didn't get him on the dirty bomb charge as all the evidence gathered was ruled out.

So actually, it doesn't "expose" the EC designation.

It just shows that this guy was still prosecutable for lesser crimes based on other evidence.

so...FAIL.

...."Somehow,I suspect that if he was a white guy from West Virginia plotting to blow up gay bars he wouldn't find any defenders here"


Your right Moron, sorry, I mean Guest 5, but from half the country the white "buddy of yours" would be held up as a hero and a defender of the sacred institution of marriage, especially if he blew up a government building. And if he ran into the woods to hide, he would not want for food, because people would leave him four course- red neck- meals by the road side and heck if he was hold up in a farm in Texas with a bunch of kids he raped and allowed to be rapped, and the Federal Government came after him, the federal government would be demonized and he would be called a hero

p.s have a great time at the air and water show!

spook - you really need to spellcheck and grammar-check your posts. it doesn't matter what you're spewing - if it reads like klingon, you're not getting your point across.

cut and paste from ms word or something. really.

Spellcheck doesn't go far enough.

I was going to suggest laying off the cough syrup.

Spell check, nothing. The boy need brain check.

Spell check, nothing. The boy needs brain check.

If Jose
Padilla did in fact, fill in a style="color: rgb(102, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;"
href="http://www.strangefunkidz.com/content/item/21393.html">"Applicazione
to Joina De Mafia" style="color: rgb(102, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;"> or " style="color: rgb(102, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;"
href="http://www.buffalobeast.com/89/BEAST89websize.pdf">Mujahideen
Data Form"
for Al Qaida, "It is a pretty
big leap between a mere indication of
desire to attend a camp and a crystallized desire to kill, maim and
kidnap." said Peter Marqulies, as quoted by the href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/18/us/nationalspecial3/18legal.html?hp">NYT.

If Jose Padilla did in fact, fill in a "Applicazione to Joina De Mafia" or "Mujahideen Data Form" for Al Qaida, "It is a pretty big leap between a mere indication of desire to attend a camp and a crystallized desire to kill, maim and kidnap." said Peter Marqulies, as quoted by the NYT.

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