Jose Padilla Convicted on All Counts
rootlesscosmo
12,848 Posts
justice served or Bush propaganda victory (five pager!)?it's a travesty that dude was held uncharged for so long with no access to a lawyer and was never Mirandized. but if dude was trying to kill us I'm glad he's in jail. did you know that al-Qaeda training camps make you fill out a written application? I didn't.August 16, 2007 Jose Padilla Convicted on All Counts in Terror Trial [/b] By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSFiled at 3:12 p.m. ETMIAMI (AP) -- Jose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges Thursday after being held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration's zeal to stop homegrown terror.Padilla, a U.S. citizen from Chicago, was once accused of being part of an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in the U.S., but those allegations were not part of his trial.Padilla, 36, and his foreign-born co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, which carries a penalty of life in prison. All three were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts, which carry potential 15-year sentences each.Jurors deliberated a day and a half after a three-month trial. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke set a Dec. 5 sentencing date.The three were accused of being part of a North American support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to groups of Islamic extremists. The defense contended they were trying to help persecuted Muslims in war zones with relief and humanitarian aid.The White House thanked the jury for a ''just'' verdict.''We commend the jury for its work in this trial and thank it for upholding a core American principle of impartial justice for all,'' said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House. ''Jose Padilla received a fair trial and a just verdict.''Estela Lebron, Padilla's mother, said she felt ''a little bit sad'' at the verdict but expected her son's lawyers would appeal.''I don't know how they found Jose guilty. There was no evidence he was speaking in code,'' she said, referring to FBI wiretap intercepts in which Padilla was overheard talking to Hassoun.Padilla was first detained in 2002 because of much more sensational accusations. The Bush administration portrayed Padilla, a U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, as a committed terrorist who was part of an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in the U.S. The administration called his detention an important victory in the war against terrorism, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks.The charges brought in civilian court in Miami, however, were a pale shadow of those initial claims in part because Padilla was interrogated about the plot when he was held as an enemy combatant for 3 1/2 years in military custody with no lawyer present and was not read his Miranda rights.Padilla's attorneys fought for years to get his case into federal court, and he was finally added to the Miami terrorism support indictment in late 2005 just as the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to consider President Bush's authority to continue detaining him. Padilla had lived in South Florida in the 1990s and was supposedly recruited by Hassoun at a mosque to become a mujahedeen fighter.The key piece of physical evidence was a five-page form Padilla supposedly filled out in July 2000 to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, which would link the other two defendants as well to Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization.The form, recovered by the CIA in 2001 in Afghanistan, contains seven of Padilla's fingerprints and several other personal identifiers, such as his birthdate and his ability to speak Spanish, English and Arabic.''He provided himself to al-Qaida for training to learn to murder, kidnap and maim,'' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier in closing arguments.Padilla's lawyers insisted the form was far from conclusive and denied that he was a ''star recruit,'' as prosecutors claimed, of the North American support cell intending to become a terrorist. Padilla's attorneys said he traveled to Egypt in September 1998 to learn Islam more deeply and become fluent in Arabic.''His intent was to study, not to murder,'' said Padilla attorney Michael Caruso.Central to the investigation were some 300,000 FBI wiretap intercepts collected from 1993 to 2001, mainly involving Padilla's co-defendants Hassoun and Jayyousi and others. Most of the conversations were in Arabic and purportedly used code such as ''tourism'' and ''football'' for violent jihad or ''zucchini'' and ''eggplant'' instead of military weapons or ammunition.The bulk of these conversations and other evidence concerned efforts in the 1990s by Hassoun and Jayyousi, both 45, to assist Muslims in conflict zones such as Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Lebanon.Hassoun is a computer programmer of Palestinian descent who was born in Lebanon. Jayyousi is a civil engineer and public schools administrator who is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jordan. Jayyousi also ran an organization called American Worldwide Relief and published a newsletter called the Islam Report that provided details of battles and political issues in the Muslim world.''It wasn't a terrorist operation. It was a relief operation,'' said Jayyousi attorney William Swor.
Comments
i have no idea if the guy is innocent or guilty but the evidence in this case was weak. i followed the nyt's coverage of the trial, and just as this article stated, the only "evidence" of Padilla's guilt was that application for an Al Queda camp that had his fingerprints (but apparently a different palm print) and a few taped conversations with alleged "code language". and the govt spent how much money on this trial??? probably in the tens of millions. this verdict will get overturned on appeal, assuming its not a panel of strictly bush appointees.
hahaha yeah the code talk seemed pretty suspect. they at least should have gone with some believable shit. I mean, what were a Latino ex-ganng member and two Islamists doing making long-distance phonecalls to each other about zucchini and eggplant? he had to know this would arouse suspicion.
Serious question.....
If a trial costs $10 million....how much of that would just go to lawyer fees??
aren't we talking about salaried Justic dept lawyers? talking about "fees" seems irrelevant.
????
I'd like to know what "costs" 10 mil??
not sure what the breakdown is but my point was that it's not like a class-action civil suit or the OJ trial where lawyers are getting millions. you asked what part of the government's $10M outlay goes to lawyers fees and the answer is basically none of it. the government's lawyers get their $65K (or whatever) salaries and prosecute whatever cases they are assigned. they don't charge the government fees; they work for the government.
as for the defense, not sure how much they get paid. though it would not surprise me if big law firms or civil rights attorneys trying to get famous took these cases pro bono.
this is to say nothing about the $10M number that whoever posted. that could be off.
or how about the fact that he has been involved in litigation since '02 in various federal courts, including the supreme court, up until his case finally went to a jury trial.
$10 mill is probably an extremely low estimate, it could be over a hundred mil.
So this is the cost of doing business..
Do you feel we should not have spent that money??
This one hits a little close to home as I've mentioned here before, that Adam Gadahn one of the "American Grown Terrorists" is the son of a longtime friend.
They have Adam on numerous videos stating that he is a terrorist and seeks to harm the U.S.
I assume once he's caught, even WITH that evidence, it will cost big bucks to prosecute him.
What alternatives are there??
We could start by not torturing every "alleged" terrorist and then denying them their habeous corpus rights, which is exactly what happened in Padilla's case. Half the money that was spent, i'd imagine, related to the govt's efforts to keep holding him at Gitmo without formally charging him. this case was botched from day 1 and i'm pretty sure a majority of the "evidence" that the govt had was inadmissable because it came from interrogations before he had a lawyer.
i'm not saying the govt shouldnt prosecute terrorists, but this dude, even if he is guilty of "plotting", is the bottom of the barrel. i think the dude worked at a fast food joint. there's gotta be some real terrorists out there, right?
well plea bargains are good way to cut costs. assuming the videos are admissible, the gov't would have huge leverage in Gagahn's case to negotiate a plea bargain.
on the other hand these terrorist types often like to use the trial for propaganda purposes. and if they are going to jail for life anyway, why not take the stand and poke some holes in the govt's arguments? and of course there's always a Lynne Stewart type there to convince the alleged terrorist that he's got a case.
Yes, they were very organized.
On the actual case, I'm a little surprised but not much that he was found guilty. The only real piece of evidence they had was the application form, but that was probably enough to convince a jury. The real question is whether the conviction will stand up to appeals seeing as how he was held, etc. More importantly, he wasn't charged with the dirty bomb charge that made all the headlines when he was originally arrested because they probably couldn't use any of that evidence because of what they did to him.