Yesterday we received the news that a jury of Jose Padilla's peers found him Guilty of all charges against him after having found he was competent to stand trial.
Those charges include:(Via MM)
Count 1 - Conspiracy to Murder, Kidnap, and Maim Persons in a Foreign Country as part of a conspiracy to advance violent jihad
Count 2 - Conspiracy to Provide Material Support for Terrorists
Count 3 - Material Support for Terrorists
Counts 4 and 5 are against Hassoun for unlawful possession of a weapon and making a false statement
Counts 6 through 10 are against Hassoun for multiple charges of perjury
Count 11 is against Hassoun for obstruction
Today we see, not unexpectedly, that Democracy now, via memeorandum, has a piece out titled "An Inside Look at How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla".
Democracy now interviews Dr. Angela Hegarty, one of the experts that the defense hired for Padilla's competency trial, but in thier "interview" they left out a very important part of that testimony.
During cross-examination, prosecutor John Shipley pointed to a test administered by Hegarty in which Padilla scored zero on the portions indicating post-traumatic stress disorder. Those segments involved questions about flashbacks, nightmares, depression and other symptoms.
"Nothing in this test supports your diagnosis at all, isn't that correct?" Shipley asked.
"No," Hegarty replied, noting that the test answers were only one component of her decision.
Democracy now forgot to mention that part of his competency trial, so I figured I would.
In February of 2007, Jose Padilla was declared mentally fit for trial.
This post is not a discussion on whether he should have been held as an enemy combatant or whether he should have been immediately tried.
Captain's Quarters addresses that issue:
We should have done the same with Padilla, especially since he was captured not on a foreign battlefield but here in the US. If he conspired with al-Qaeda to kill Americans, then he's a traitor -- but even traitors have to be convicted in criminal court, with the due process we expect as Americans. And since it seems that the government had all the evidence it needed to convict him at the time of his capture, they have no excuse for applying an exotic and incorrect status to him to strip him of his rights to due process. After they won the conviction that would send him to prison for life, they could have worked on the other case at their leisure.The Bush administration has done an excellent job in protecting this nation from attack, but they made a mistake with Padilla -- one they implicitly admitted when they finally moved his case to the criminal court system. It's one they should acknowledge explicitly and endeavor not to repeat.
This post is about Jose Padilla, himself, who he is, what he is and his past.
Back in December of 2006, I took a look at Jose Padilla and his past.
Padilla was raised in Chicago, where he became involved in the gang scene at an early age. He was arrested at age 14 in a brutal murder and robbery committed by several gang members. Padilla moved with his family to South Florida after being released from juvenile detention in 1988.
In 1991, he was arrested in Florida after a road rage incident in which he pointed a loaded gun at a police officer. He served 10 months in prison.
Although several published reports have suggested that Padilla converted to Islam in prison, this does not appear to be the case. (All the reports have been attributed to anonymous government sources.) What seems more likely is that Padilla formed a favorable impression of Islam as a result of his prison experience, but several well-sourced news reports indicated that he first expressed interest in actually converting in 1993, while working at a Taco Bell in Davie, Fl., near Fort Lauderdale.
The New York Times in 2002 quoted Padilla's manager at the restaurant as saying that Padilla inquired about Islam while working at the store in early 1993.
According to government sources quoted in South Florida newspapers, Padilla may have been introduced to Islam by Adham Hassoun, a local Palestinian activist who in early 1993 opened an office of the Benevolence International Foundation in Plantation, Fla., about five minutes from Padilla's workplace.
The Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) has been designated as a terrorist organization by the federal government, which charges that the Islamic charity is a front for al Qaeda money laundering operations. Hassoun was arrested shortly after Padilla on an immigration charge and is currently fighting deportation in South Florida. He has not been charged with a terrorism-related crime, and he has denied any ties to al Qaeda and any wrongdoing in general.
Adham Hassoun has been charged with illegally possessing a firearm, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which also reported that, in a separate proceeding "Immigration Judge Neale Foster found Hassoun participated in an assassination plot, recruited a "jihad fighter," donated money to charities under investigation for possible links to terrorism and belonged to an international terrorist organization called Al-Gama Al-Islamiyya, according to Hassoun's petition for release to a federal district judge. That petition was denied."
Al-Gama Al-Islamiyya, also known as the Islamic Group, was led by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the spiritual leader of a New York City-based al Qaeda cell. One member of that cell, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, recruited U.S. military veterans for al Qaeda, as reported in an investigative report exclusive to Intelwire.
Padilla's formal conversion appears to have taken place in 1994, when he took the Muslim name Ibrahim. When he was arrested, he had taken the Muslim name Abdullah Al-Muhajir. His subsequent court filings have been under the name Jose Padilla, which is by far the most common name used in news accounts.
Padilla left the U.S. in 1998. According to most accounts, he traveled to Egypt first, where he was to study Arabic, but found his way to Saudi Arabia and to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions and al Qaeda soon thereafter, according to an affidavit by Michael Mobbs, a Defense Department adviser.
After connecting with al Qaeda in Pakistan, Padilla appears to have answered directly to Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
CBS News reported in 2002 that Hassoun and Padilla had been in telephone contact shortly before Padilla returned to the U.S, and BIF was based in Chicago, where Padilla flew into the U.S.
His Florida police record also gives insight into this man and his perpensity of being a danger to others.
Murder before he is 18, gun charges with one of the pointing a gun at an officer and connections with al-Qaeda.... anyone still feeling sorry for this guy?
In an older NYT article we found:
But in 1985, Mr. Padilla was arrested in Chicago in connection with an armed robbery turned homicide. He told the police that he and a friend had decided to rob a pair of Mexican gang members because they were drunk; court documents show they took a watch, $107 and some Mexican currency. The victims chased the robbers, leading to the stabbing. Mr. Padilla was prosecuted as a juvenile.
Mr. Padilla's records are sealed because of his age at the time, but he is believed to have spent three years in juvenile detention. The prosecutor at the trial where his partner was convicted of murder said in a closing statement that Mr. Padilla "punched, kicked and clubbed" a victim with a baseball bat.
Court records show that Mr. Padilla, using aliases, was arrested twice in 1989, for assault and battery and for trespassing, and failed to report to his probation officer two months in a row, prompting an arrest warrant. Two years later, he faced weapons charges after being caught on Chicago's West Side with an unregistered .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson, police records show. At one point, he identified himself as a member of the Latin Disciples gang.
Mr. Padilla apparently jumped bail and, soon after, got in trouble 1,355 miles away, in Sunrise, Fla., near his mother's home. He was sentenced to 364 days in jail after a traffic accident in which he fired a revolver toward a car 20 to 25 feet away, according to police reports.
"He was resisting our commands, he was reaching for the gun," said the arresting officer, Lt. Charles Vitale of the Sunrise police. "He was 20 years old. It was an anger-type incident.
Such a nice boy before our big bad mean administration got their hands on him, huh?
Jules Crittenden states:
It turns out, when the United States made the mistake of treating a turncoat enemy combatant as such, rather than treating him as a garden-variety domestic criminal, they screwed their primary case due to Miranda issues. This would not have been a problem had Padilla been subjected to a military tribunal and summary execution. You know, like George Washington used to do. The kind of thing you would expect for a traitor who has taken up arms against his country.
But it is fascinating that there are Americans who hate their president so much, they are willing to believe anything that terrorists, their legal representatives and their sympathizers say, to the point of ignoring reports in their own Bush-bashing press.
Mistakes aside, not only was this man judged as mentally fit to stand trial, but he was found guilty by a jury of his peers.
Where he was held, how long he was held and whether he should have been held where and how long he was, does not negate the fact that this man committed crimes and has been convicted.
HE WAS GUILTY and no amount of "distraction" is going to change that basic, simple fact.
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