José Padilla (criminal)

José Padilla (born October 18, 1970), also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir or Muhajir Abdullah, is a United States citizen who was convicted in a federal court of aiding terrorists.

While living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Padilla attended the Masjid Al-Iman mosque, as did Adham Amin Hassoun, "for most of the 1990s and [they] were reportedly friends."

U.S. authorities accused Hassoun of associating with radical Islamic fundamentalists, including Al-Qaeda.

Broward County, Florida court records show that on July 1, 1994, Padilla changed his name to one word: "Ibrahim".

He was married under that name to Cherie Maria Stultz on January 2, 1996.

They divorced in March 2001, according to court records.

In January 2001, she had placed an ad in a local business newspaper, serving notice that she was seeking divorce.

Their divorce papers identify him as Jose Ibrahim Padilla.

Padilla married an Egyptian woman named Shamia'a, and they had two sons together.

The order "legally justified" the detention using the 2001 AUMF passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, (formally "The Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution" (Public Law 107-40)) and opined that a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil can be classified as an enemy combatant.

(This opinion is based on the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Ex parte Quirin, a case involving the detention of eight German spies operating in the United States while working for Nazi Germany during World War II.)

Padilla was arrested in Chicago on May 8, 2002, on suspicion of plotting a radiological bomb ("dirty bomb") attack.

He was detained as a material witness until June 9, 2002, when President George W. Bush designated him an enemy combatant and, arguing that he was not entitled to trial in civilian courts, had him transferred to a military prison in South Carolina.

Padilla was held for three and a half years as an enemy combatant.

Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, was arrested in 2002 for overstaying his visa and was charged in 2004 with providing material support to terrorists.

By that time, Hassoun had already been charged with perjury, a weapons offense, and other offenses.

When he was arrested in 2002, the boys were infants.

At his bail hearing, his wife and children were believed to be overseas.

According to press reports in 2002, Padilla had been in the Afghanistan–Pakistan region in 2001 and early 2002.

At the time, the Defense Department said that Abu Zubaydah, then believed to be a top al-Qaeda official, had led the US to Padilla.

Padilla was alleged to have been trained in the construction and employment of radiologic weapons – "dirty bombs" – at an al-Qaeda safe house in Lahore, Pakistan.

Padilla and Binyam Mohammed, a United Kingdom resident, were alleged to have been recruited at the Lahore safe house to travel to the United States to launch terrorist attacks.

However, more recent evidence suggests that the "dirty bomb" plot was likely a ruse to get out of Pakistan and based on an internet joke website purporting to describe how to build an H-bomb by swinging buckets of uranium as fast as possible.

On his return, he was arrested by U.S. Customs 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 George Bush issued an order to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to detain Padilla as an "enemy combatant."

Padilla was transferred to a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina, without any notice to his attorney or family.

A 2003 CIA memo notes that the satirical article "is filled with countless technical inaccuracies which would likely result in the death of anyone attempting to follow the instructions, and definitely would not result in a nuclear explosion".

Padilla traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

Upon pressure and lawsuits from civil liberties groups, he was transferred to a civilian jail in 2006.

In August 2007, a federal jury found him guilty of conspiring to commit murder and fund terrorism.

Government officials had earlier claimed Padilla was suspected of planning to build and explode a "dirty bomb" in the United States, but he was never charged with this crime.

He was initially sentenced to 17 years in prison, which was increased on appeal to 21 years.

His lawsuits against the military for allegedly torturing him were rejected by the courts for lack of merit and jurisdictional issues.

José Padilla was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Estella Obregón and her husband, both of Puerto Rican descent.

The family later moved to Chicago, Illinois.

As a youth, Padilla joined the Latin Kings street gang and was arrested several times.

During his gang years, he maintained several aliases, such as José Rivera, José Alicea, José Hernandez, and José Ortiz.

As a 14-year-old juvenile, he was convicted of aggravated assault and manslaughter after a gang member, whom he had kicked in the head, died.

After serving his last jail sentence, Padilla converted to Islam after his marriage to a Muslim woman and moved to the Middle East.

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.