Case against Padilla 'light on facts'

Last update: November 18, 2006 – 9:04 PM

That was the assessment of a federal judge who dropped the most serious conspiracy count. Prosecutors are appealing.
Dan Eggen, Washington Post


WASHINGTON - After he was arrested in 2002, Jose Padilla was considered so dangerous that he was held without charges in a military prison for more than three years -- accused first of plotting a radiological "dirty bomb" attack and later of conspiring with Al-Qaida to blow up apartment buildings with natural gas.

But now, nearly a year after his abrupt transfer into a regular criminal court, the Justice Department's prosecution of the former Chicago gang member is running into trouble.

A Republican-appointed federal judge in Miami has already dumped the most serious conspiracy count against Padilla, removing for now the possibility of a life sentence. The same judge has also disparaged the government's case as "light on facts," while defense lawyers have made detailed allegations that Padilla was tortured, threatened and perhaps even drugged during his detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

The Justice Department denied the allegations of torture last week and is pursuing an appeal of the conspiracy ruling in hopes that the charge will be reinstated. Prosecutors on Thursday also took the unusual step of revealing that Abu Zubaida, an Al-Qaida leader now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a key source who led authorities to Padilla.

Acquittal possible

Some legal scholars and defense lawyers argue that the government's case is so fundamentally weak and its legal options so limited that Padilla could draw a relatively minor prison term or even be acquitted. The trial has been postponed once, until January, and is almost certain to be delayed again.

The difficulties have reignited a debate in legal circles over whether terrorism suspects such as Padilla can be effectively prosecuted in regular criminal courts or whether the Bush administration blew its chances by relying on questionable interrogation methods that cannot be used to build a criminal case.

Stephen Vladeck, an associate law professor at the University of Miami, said an acquittal or mixed result "would certainly add fodder to the position that the courts are not set up to handle these kinds of cases. But it also adds fodder to the other side that says they never had anything to begin with."This is the government's shot," Vladeck said. "It's certainly not near as strong a case as it was made out to be when the indictment was unsealed."

From combatant to charges

Padilla, now 35, was first thrust into the spotlight in June 2002, when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Padilla's arrest and designation as an "enemy combatant."

Two years later -- facing growing legal challenges -- the administration took the unusual step of outlining a host of new allegations against Padilla, playing down the original accusations involving a "dirty bomb" plot. The indictment instead alleged that Padilla joined two other defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, in funneling money to terrorist groups for battles overseas.

In a motion to dismiss the case in October, federal public defender Michael Caruso and his team alleged that Padilla "was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention."

The government counters that Padilla offers no evidence to back up the allegations and that his treatment is irrelevant to the criminal case.

A problem of evidence

Robert Chesney, a specialist in national security law at Wake Forest University, said he thinks the government will be able to fend off many of the current challenges to its case, including the decision by Judge Marcia Cooke, appointed by Bush in 2004, to throw out the murder conspiracy charge.

But Chesney and other legal scholars on both sides say that the government's case could prove troublesome in front of a jury.

"I think the prosecution is ultimately going to emerge victorious" Chesney said. "But, from Day One, we've never had sufficient admissible evidence to fully prosecute Jose Padilla."

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